Jean-Marc Bustamante
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Jean-Marc Bustamante’s huge color prints of Swiss landscapes–some nearly eight feet high–humble the viewer. The 9 (from a series of 12) on view at Donald Young are so precisely detailed, down to the tiniest pebble, they evoke pristine mountain air. Shot on eight-by-ten-inch negatives, each includes part of a lake and often trees, mountains, and tidy, well-kept buildings. But these are not postcard views: they lack a single center of attention. Instead Bustamante’s choices of subject and frame confront the viewer with a lush, multilevel surface. One thinks of the large, almost theatrical 19th-century American landscape paintings of Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt, which traveled from city to city as tourist attractions–though such works would probably not be principal reference points for Bustamante, a well-recognized French artist who also makes sculptures and installations.
L.P. X shows a lakeside road from above with a classical column at the water’s edge. In a conventional composition the column would be a stable resting place for the eye, but here it almost throws the picture off balance. Because the lake is indistinct, with no ripples and no reflections, it seems a limitless void, and because of the unusual overhead perspective and diagonals, one feels in some danger of falling in. Staring at the pillar gives a vertiginous sense of standing at the edge of the world.
L.P. III is almost entirely given over to nature, but tree stumps reveal that the landscape has been disturbed. The seemingly chaotic tangle of small plants and seedlings that almost covers the stumps pulls us into the complex natural order of this new growth. A sliver of lake separates us from the mountains behind, and the white triangle of a sailboat is visible through some leaves. The pointed tip of the sail is obscured by a single downward-pointing leaf, a juxtaposition so precise it’s hard to believe it’s accidental, though it occupies only about 1 percent of the image. It seems Bustamante has found the precise moment when a leaf can dominate a sailboat–a moment he makes available, if not obvious, to any viewer.
