Joan Fontcuberta
Joan Fontcuberta's works form a no-man’s land between the virtual and the real, between truth and illusion.

For the project Landscapes without Memory, Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta (b. 1955, Barcelona) used software developed by the US Air Force. It translates two-dimensional cartographic data into a simulated three-dimensional image.

Instead of feeding maps into the software, in Landscapes without Memory Fontcuberta inserts painted landscapes: from Gauguin to Van Gogh, from Cezanne to Turner and Constable. The software translates them into new, virtual landscapes that Fontcuberta calls post-landscapes. 

Fontcuberta has been especially fascinated by the influence of the digital revolution on the way we communicate and on our use of image. Landscapes without Memory is one such project. He begins here by subjectively interpreting and portraying a landscape, and then using software to interpret and translate the artificial object. The result is a new reality which Foncuberta calls ‘technologically-defined contemporary hallucinations’. 

This exhibition is part of the Life Like platform, a project launched by Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, EYE Film Institute of the Netherlands and Van Gogh Museum to draw attention to the realist art movement.

Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, City of Amsterdam, Delta Lloyd, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.

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Joan Fontcuberta