Artwork > THE DYNAMICS OF URBANIZATION

EXPANSION OF TERRITORY
EXPANSION OF TERRITORY
acrylic on canvas
58" x 78"
1989

From across the landscape of grasslands and wheat fields we see a time lapse avalanche of prefab housing and sports arenas, nuclear reactors and shopping malls wildly jostling for new territory.
We can see the image as a computer generated animation charting the developments of real estate interests, projecting the stages of that inexorable growth.
Seen in this way the different structures seem to be kinds of bacterial organisms furiously struggling against each other in a conflict of space and survival.
Viewed from geological time, the ferocious conflicts of real estate seem to represent a primal struggle of one species to overtake and consume another.
While the landscape itself seems all the more threatened, we are allowed to see in this way the reverse of a traditional view; it is not that beasts dwell in the landscape, but rather something beastly forms our cities.

- Den Lebel