Beach View, 2015→2021

Archival pigment prints on canvas, wooden frame, in parts with sisal and raffia string, plants, nails or candles
here: Exhibition view "Dead End Galaxies", EXILE, Berlin, 2018
description

The series Beach View shows images of paradise-like beaches from the shores of tropical countries taken from Google Earth, in a perspective watching the beach off shore. The pictures themselves are a digital reconstruction of the area being represented, where cameras have no access from such a perspective, the outcome being a calculated image shaped upon a 3D model of the terrain according to topographic information, which doesn’t always result into a credible landscape, but rather has the appearance of an unreal painted surface. The blurred image recalls impressionist landscape views as well as color field paintings in its reduced horizontal composition. The pictures are mounted on wooden frames that resemble the very imitation of exoticism that one could find in a Five Star Thai-Style Beach Resort in the coast of Tenerife. Such a replica, based on an abstract and inaccurate idea of "pseudo-asianism" (self-aware of being a fake and embracing it), is made from an accumulation of exported imagery and concepts such as closeness to nature, Zen, and life in Paradise. With this, Oldendorf doesn’t only point to the inherent kitsch value of the fabricated portrait of exoticism, but also to the contemporary version of the romantic standing in front of the magnificent, wild and intimidating territory. This is, no longer unconquered as in the eyes of the first western explorer, but rather as a version adjusted to the expectations of the global tourist – whose involvement can go from the at home spa experience to an on the spot pre-packaged adventure, as a range of possibilities of one same thing.
⟨Text: Sira Piza⟩

105 × 85 × 14 cm
253 × 183 × 12 cm
137 x 108 x 23 cm
153 × 124 × 10 cm
115 × 100 × 16 cm
184 x 144 x 6 cm
177 x 150 x 18 cm
164 x 132 x 7 cm
118 x 102 x 10 cm
108 x 90 x 6 cm
150 × 130 × 8 cm
196 x 118 x 10 cm