John Saurer

TEnderland

02.26.22 - 04.09.22

John Saurer’s ongoing investigation of the West, in multiple series, breathes the storied past and tenuous future of its fragile ecosystem. The work amplifies the myth-making, shifting culture and changing landscape that describe this evolution. 

In a series titled, “Monuments”, Saurer’s handling of delicate studies of western iconography, namely: the Ponderosa pine, haystacks, and windmills, are delicately branded with a hot stylus in mulberry paper. This exacting technique underlies the pervasiveness of fire in the West, on the land and its mark-making across it, on its people and their claims of ownership or ceremonies of appreciation. The images Saurer chooses to highlight speak to the mythology, but isolating these iconic representations in vast negative space is lonely and vanishing. These monuments are fleeting.

“Tender Land”, likewise, feels forlorn, monotypes in gray tones, vestiges of seasons’ past. The beauty is in its temporality. An installation of these small, square format leaves, feathers and other western seasonal debris is well-ordered, pointing to the structure that Saurer calls upon in his practice. Although the impetus behind the series was to document any and all debris without hierarchy, Saurer believes “all the subjects are then transformed through the process of inking, pressing and printing”,  trash and leaf alike. In this installation, the grid tends to reference a taxonomic interpretation, but Saurer notes, “the summative effect [of the grid and its site-specific sequence] is that all subjects become equal, and beautiful. A complicated process and a metaphor for our relationship to the land.”  The process lends to the work straddling the line of artifact and memory.

In the last series of this exhibition, “Loco-Motion”, the artist’s hand is the most removed from the work. The images are splatter effects from the steel wheels riding along endless miles of railroad track and spraying the undersides of grain cars. Saurer documents a landscape created by constant movement and continual “progress” that references generations of colonization, industry and environmental impact. Saurer’s capturing of this abstraction necessitated finding an alternative perspective, on the ground, looking at the underbelly of progress. There would be no better way to cross Tender Land than through this methodology.

Each series has been exhibited in other locations, but this will be the first time they will be shown, together, at the place of their provenance. Saurer “feels an intrinsic value [in these three series returning to the place they originated]... they become richer because they have returned here”.

Tender Land Series

2019 - Present

Mono Print on Rives BFK

13 x 13 in.