NATHANIEL RACKOWE

The title of the exhibition is inspired by a passage in Klara and the Sun by acclaimed writer Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara, the Artificial Friend protagonist of the novel, understands her environment in moments of intense focus by fracturing the visual information she receives. There is a beautiful description of this happening in the setting sun across a rural landscape, and this moment brings Klara great clarity and an ability to step back and see things from different angles simultaneously. Rackowe read the book during a period of reevaluating his own spatial surroundings, exploring London in a different way during lockdown, and reassessing his life after surviving cancer. The intersection of the rural and built environments in London became increasingly significant, and he found his work shifting to focus on natural light, reflection, horizon, and fractured undulating surfaces that seemed to layer the natural and built. In Fractured Landscapes Rackowe seeks to capture and fix something of transcendental moments of clarity that he, like Klara, found in moments alone in the landscape.

Press release courtesy Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai.