Landscape Allegories, 2004

Julie Mehretu is known for her meticulously layered gestural paintings, often thought to visualize the architecture of modern systems. As in her paintings, Mehretu’s Landscape Allegories etchings employ multiple techniques to produce images which are dually abstract and representational. The plates suggest images of wind turbulence and other weather phenomena intersecting with the ghostly scaffolding of human infrastructure. Tension is evident between the rigidity of architecture and an unruly “nature.” Landscape Allegories was produced during the same year as Mehretu’s widely known Stadia II painting, suggestive of the artist’s timely interest in systems of power and their widespread effects.

Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American artist who lives and works in New York City. She has been at the forefront of contemporary art for nearly three decades exploring subjects of history, the phenomenology of the social, and the psychogeography of space. In her large-scale landscapes and abstractions, Mehretu builds up layers of acrylic paint along with photographs, media images, architectural plans, and maps. These reference points are transposed onto her canvases to depict the cumulative effect of urban histories and socio-political changes. Within this unique visual vocabulary, she captures the dynamism of contemporary experiences and various systems in her work.