UCSD Open Studios: Shane Anderson

Shane Anderson

I have focused my work on issues related to landscape use and how it is perceived and utilized. I have been investigating the ways in which we invest in and occupy space, trying to gain a deeper understanding of landscape states and our societies' relationships to their environments. Landscape representations are attitudes of awareness; our interpretations of them and their spatial compositions bring us new visions of the world and ourselves.

The spaces in which we live show clear evidence of the rapid pace and multiplicity of changes that have occurred over the past century. Our natural, rural and urban environments have undergone dramatic upheavals, especially in Southern California. The current landscape is a coming together of radically different and often contradictory spaces. For us, this ever-more fragmented territory has become familiar, and we often traverse it without awareness. The fragmentation of the landscape closely parallels the compartmentalization of our activities and time.

My work deals with ideas about today's socio-systemic world in which land values shape urban geography, building design, and eventually the lives of people. The images reflect the incongruous relationship today between people and their environment. I am capturing the effects of society on the landscape, and the ways in which landscape has influenced the advance of civilization.

Shane Anderson

Artists