Artwork Appreciation
LIN Ru-Dao’s Manufactured Landscapes 10: Forest of Death illustrates a virtual time and space. The foreground of the scene depicts the fossils of a T-rex and a wooly mammoth. The mid-ground is dominated by overly-developed slopes, while the background shows an industrialized zone. These three themes of different time and space have been brought together under a single composition. The artist employed acrylic paint to create a thick and stacked texture, using saturated tones to generate a heavy atmosphere that seemed calm at the surface but hides artificial destruction and conflicts. Fossils of two prehistoric animals serve as a metaphor for the opposing forces of industrial development and conservation of natural ecology. LIN Ru-Dao used art as a means to contemplate our past and present states as well as the development of our civilization.