Polemics of the Landscape

About

Polemics of a Landscape is a new, ongoing body of work by Jordan Tate exploring the experience of viewing land and making landscape photographs. It is a marked departure from the work for which he is best known, a conceptual digital photography practice. In early 2018, Tate embarked on a series of written correspondence with art historian Abigail Susik in which they create a framework for how to talk about this work, investigating philosophy and art criticism alongside of their everyday experiences of travel, teaching, and familial obligations. A publication of their letters and Tate’s photographs will be part of the exhibition. The publication is titled Picturesque Snot, an alternate title for the series which explores a typo of “snow” Tate made early in their exchanges. Susik writes, “It’s like as soon as you captured the photographic image, the coolness of the place, its difference of land, was suddenly transmuted into gooey snot as ‘picturesque’ enframed picture-landscape.”

Jordan Tate (born 1981 in Louisville, Kentucky) is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Cincinnati. He has a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Indiana University. He was a Fulbright Fellow in 2008-2009. Tate’s work is currently held in collections nationwide, including Rhizome at the New Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Fred and Laura Bidwell Collection, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Tate has exhibited at the Transformer Station (Cleveland, OH), Denny Gallery (NYC), Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris, France), Higher Pictures (NYC), The Photographers Gallery (London, UK), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland.