Black Box: Gerco de Ruijter

Gerco de Ruijter, Contact Sheet #2 (time), (detail), 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

August 12, 2013 to January 2, 2014
The Dutch landscape tradition continues to inspire invention. Known for remote aerial photography in which he pilots his camera with a kite or an elongated fishing rod, Gerco de Ruijter turns to the found imagery of Google Earth for his four-minute video CROPS. Syncing more than a thousand vertical views of center-pivot irrigation plots in the American southwest to a stuttering, hypnotic score by Michel Banabila, de Ruijter creates a stop-motion animation of the cultivated landscape. Identifiable yet abstract—and devoid of a horizon line—the stills are unified by geometry but made distinct by the workings of both man and nature.

CROPS offers a powerful statement, launching landscape photography into a genuinely new dimension.

–Louis Jacobson on Black Box: Gerco de Ruijter
 in Washington City Paper, August 23, 2013
View full article on Washington City Paper

This program is made possible with financial support from
the Mondriaan Fund and Manuel de Santaren.