NEW MEXICO 17 YEARS AFTER
The series is named New Mexico 17 years after and consist of photographs I have taken in New Mexico, America in September 2009 and merged together with my paintings into one image. The paintings are all 80 X 80 cm - quadrates as to open the paintings aiming to show a state of mind that can be either landscapes or portraits, both or neither.
When I was 16 years old in September 1992 I travelled to New Mexico and lived in the desert state. The journey was a high impact experience due to my youth but also since New Mexico primarily consists of nothing but desert and wide open spaces. I grew up in urban Copenhagen and all of a sudden found myself placed in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nature and not much else and it was the first time in my life where I ever experienced solitude, silence and nature.
Paradoxically another prominent feature in the desert state was a vibrant underground music scene and it was my first meeting with fishnet stockings, dr. martens and boys in plat skirts. The existence of a punk rock scene in the middle of nowhere was an odd but perfect match that created high voltage intensity and no possibility to escape or turn off.
The paintings are all painted before my second trip and they evolve around that longing I have felt to go back to New Mexico for all 17 years. The longing has been strong and consistent but I never wanted to take it too serious since I rationalized that 16 years is a very impressionable age and I rationalized that it was just a glorification of a youth experience and that a second visit there would be pointless.
In hindsight I realize that I was terrified to go back and find that it was all but nothing just a high impact youth experience. I was afraid to lose the notion that there actually exists a real physical place in my world – the Western world that has not been besmirched by Baudrillard’s hyperreality – if you can find a place in the world that is real then maybe you are also real.
This highly personalized series contains elements of; romanticism, nature, longing and solitude. Furthermore, the elements of meeting yourself out alone in the world and the confrontation and, at times, conflict it implies. I.e.; The conflict between nature and culture, urban and. desert, sentiment and rationality, following a longing or a sense of duty. Moreover, with this series I as a visual artist also wish to investigate; how much of personal notion is valid and relevant to a perceiver? And consequently how much is art able to transcend? And the longing to communicate, to transcend solitary notions and sentiment to a perceiver via art
The photographs are all taken this September 2009 in a person’s house that I last saw in New Mexico 17 years ago. I could have chosen to combine my paintings with the stunning images of the New Mexico sky and desert but I think the subject matter is better captured in pictures of deserted everyday life scenarios, as it is there at present day, also for the reason that the series concerns time and the romantic notion of what might have been if it had not been for conventions, rationality and a sense of duty. However, the series is left open without conclusion since the photographs also pose a question if that would really have been the right thing to do?
Furthermore, the photos could have been taken anywhere in New Mexico since the key element is the self portraits – the 16 years old meeting the 33 year old thus portrayed through her questioning perspective – documenting meeting yourself 17 years after.
Marie Irmgard, Copenhagen 2010