Book Description

Flight Patterns highlights contemporary artists primarily working in the Pacific Basin--Southern California, Canada, New Zealand and Australia--whose work addresses the specific topographical conditions and experience of living in this geographically and geopolitically dynamic region. As its conceptual foundation, Flight Patterns rethinks topographical practices of photography since the 1970s, looking at current manifestations of the topographical impulse in landscape-oriented work. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue include new projects, recent work from the 1990s, and historically significant works of photography, film, video and painting by 23 artists including Doug Aitken, Rodney Graham, Anthony Hernandez, Tracey Moffatt, Paul Outerbridge, Allan Sekula, Miles Coolidge and Simon Leung. Flight Patterns introduces the work of West Coast American artists as well as those artists working in regions where there is a parallel history of landscapes and their representation, and where similar postcolonial issues are at stake. A landmark artistic, social and geographical document, Flight Patterns highlights a diversity of artistic approaches--both formalist and conceptual--to one of the most fascinating and complex areas of the planet.