The installation art piece Transient Horizons investigates time and geological change through abstract landscape painting. Seven clear panels hang in a maze-like arrangement creating overlap of marks and planes inspired by horizon lines in Iceland. Iceland’s young and active geological landscape, offers an opportunity for conceptual time travel. As the viewer moves, seemingly so do the marks creating different views of the ethereal and transient landscape. A dichotomy arises. Just as time is a fixed construct that attempts to define a constantly changing process, so too are landscapes, both fixed and transient. In this work and the current series, I’m interested in nature’s grand gestures and the earth itself as an artist, carving its own marks over the surface over millions of years.
Cellophane, rolls of clear film, acrylic paint. 8x8x16
“Transient Horizons” a Meditation on Perspective and Intersection
Written by Amanda Daxon for 1011 Magazine
Humanity’s relationship to the earth, the world, is ever-changing. Perhaps the only constant is change over time. As created and creative beings, and as part of a created and creative world, the individual’s relationship to the earth is both dynamic and interdependent. This intersection and interaction between people and spaces is the focus of artist Katya Roberts’s installation “Transient Horizons,” currently on view at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN. In and through her work, Katya Roberts explores the intangible concepts of the human condition (such as the passage of time and its effects on perspective), as they relate to the geological forces at play in the earth. Influenced by the intense geological landscape of Iceland, Roberts is interested in nature’s grand gestures, the earth as an artist, and how the human condition, both, affects, responds to, and even imitates these natural forces.
Through the artist’s creative process, Roberts mimics the earth’s process of creation. Violent actions produce apparently restful results. Yet, even as the viewer participates in these landscapes, they reveal dynamic change and evolution. As the viewer moves through the installation, the landscape seemingly shifts.Katya Roberts is currently working on a solo exhibition with a working title of Traverse. This solo exhibition will focus on the themes present in “Transient Horizons,” while also exploring different facets of the relationships between people, space, and time. Undoubtedly, the work itself will take on different meanings as it is viewed by unique individuals in different spaces. And so, Katya Roberts’s works themselves become part of an ongoing narrative of creation, changing over time, interacting with their surroundings, ever-evolving.