Beate Gutschow: LS/S

Every blade of grass, pebble and nonchalant passerby has been painstakingly orchestrated by the artist, who draws on the work and traditions of Romantic-era painters like Constable and Turner, as well as photo legends like Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher. In this volume, the landscape series, LS, are constructed to convey the "perfect" pastoral scene. In stark contrast, the cityscape series, S, present an eerily familiar vision of a nonexistent, but clearly dystopian form of architecture. Although the two series present seemingly tranquil settings that at first appear as binary opposites, in fact, they are equally fraught with issues of control, inauthenticity and the pursuit of perfection.