Artwork Appreciation
The artist Ma Li-Chun photographs the signs of urban landscape “corrosion” and adjusts the imagery of Chinese landscape painting as the basis for his creative work. He arranges the photographs through collage in a way that makes each picture tell a story. In this way, he developed his “Landscape in Progress” series. It aims to demonstrate the impact of human civilization and urban development on nature. In his Landscape in Progress 2, he used a piece of rusted iron sheeting in the shape of a landscape contour as the base, then combined it with familiar objects and morphed elements from urban landscapes to form an imaginary scene. One can see old buildings from a military dependents’ village, a military cap (the kind one might see worn in such a village), two water towers, an old veteran walking outside the iron fence of a construction site, and so on. These tell of not only the relationship between the city and natural environment, but also the artist’s own memories of growing up in a military dependents’ village.