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Thomas Scheibitz and Inka Essenhigh focus on the surface of a genre of idyllic vistas. By filtering such heroic scenes through the slick world of graphic design and advertisements, these artists highlight the artificial and constructed nature of this perceived grandeur. The slickness of the enamel paint and the simplified forms of Essenhigh’s “american landscapes” 5 reflect a country pulled in many directions by overwhelming changes in lifestyle, working experiences, relationships, and little interaction with nature. She addresses an outside world that is more often experienced through theme parks, television, and works of art than directly. This feeling of being removed yet overwhelmed is represented by the giant stylized wave in Deluge, 1998. The wave appears to be on the verge of overcoming a group of disjointed figures, cobbled together from remnants of bodies and clothing. In Kindergrab (No. 243), translated in English as (Child’s Grave) (No. 243), Scheibitz breaks down form and uses a discordant palette to describe a dense matrix of foliage and tombstones in a children’s graveyard. Rather then being given a window into another world, the viewer is left to decode a chaotic mass of form and color. Perhaps, this complex puzzle of architecture and nature is an analogue to the fractured nature of contemporary experience.
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