@ Riverside Art Museum

EXHIBITION ON VIEW: September 21, 2024 – March 2, 2025

Location: DeVean Gallery

Andrew K. Thompson, a photographic artist from San Bernardino, California, uses palm trees and power lines and thread to explore the mythologized landscape of Southern California. The region, once inhabited by indigenous tribes such as the Tongva, Cahuilla, Kumeyaay, and Serrano, with their rich cultural heritage, is now dominated by non-native plants and a commercial skyline. Thompson’s photographs capture the ubiquity of these elements which have come to represent contemporary Southern California. Thompson also sews onto these images foregrounding the built environment as well as the presence of the artists hand. “Photography is replete with rules for taking good pictures. This body of work is the result of ignoring and reimagining those rules.”

Through his work, Thompson explores the intrinsic link between photography and landscapes, a tradition dating back to the medium’s inception. While there is a connection to the images of the New Topographics, Thompson is more interested in using photographic development metaphorically, bringing photochemical processing methods to the foreground rather than masking them behind the notion of impartial documentation.

“I sew/suture these subjects together as a critique of photography. Photography and landscapes have been intertwined since the medium’s inception, seemingly disparate at first but intrinsically linked”.

Thompson’s work invites the viewer to reframe the idea that a camera is an impartial witness to nature and recognize that the camera, chemical processes, and the artist’s own hand are all tied to the environment.

Curated by Lisa Henry.

Photos courtesy of the artist.