Architectural Bouquets

Contrary to current trends in contemporary art which favour deconstruction, ugliness, and landscape as artistic subjects, Hans J. Mettler focuses instead on the beauty of human achievements by paying tribute to them (here with architectural projects located in Los Angeles, San Francisco and The Hague (Holland). Dropping the traditional or simplistic representation, the artist establishes contrasting dialogues between the constructed world and nature. The work is doubly hybrid: first by the duality of the pictorial language and second by the double use of the media (photography and computer).

By so doing, the artist is holding both a critical and ecological discourse. Despite the appearance of pictorial idealism, behind the splendour of the images the observer may sense nature's fragility. The collage "homage to the Swiss architect Mario Botta" shows the cathedral ceiling of the Great Hall of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco melding with several tree trunks. Physical construction and natural deconstruction form a ladder in the middle of this image, and the elements fuse together. The eloquence of the collage may cause us to reflect on how urbanism and ecology could better coexist.