NATHAN COLEY

Known for his large, illuminated text works, Coley brings together public spaces and language, exploring the meanings embedded in spaces through their interrelationships. At this exhibition, he unfolds the idealized landscape of ‘Eldorado’ in a panoramic format, inviting viewers into the legendary realm of utopia. The artist pairs layered, implicative phrases with landscapes of El Dorado, which many consider symbolic of the Age of Discovery, creating an open field for contemplating the relationship between reality and ideals, and between spaces and humans.

Noted German philosopher and mathematician G. W. Leibniz’s idea of ‘the best of all possible worlds’ represents the kind of world envisioned by the utopian philosophers of his time. Coley presents Eldorado—the fabled city of gold said to have existed somewhere in Latin America—as such an ideal place. The Eldorado lightbox series incorporates panoramic wallpapers depicting Eldorado, as produced by Zuber & Cie in the 19th century. These wallpapers, which perfectly visualized the ideal world longed for by Europeans at the time, were created by French artisans using original woodblocks(later designated as national cultural heritage) and hand-printed with over 200 colors. Surrounding the lightbox series, a continuous band of achromatic, poetic landscape imagery extends along the gallery walls. This represents Eldorado landscapes that have been reconfigured by the artist using AI technologies.

As the idyllic scenes of Eldorado gently fill the gallery space, the lightboxes emerge one by one, evoking a nostalgia for the Age of Discovery. At the same time, poetic sentences illuminated with crisp, glowing light envelop viewers, inviting them into another ethereal landscape where ideals and reality come into contact.