This catalog presents for the first time Heribert C Ottersbach’s new works complex, the recently completed Arkadia Block. With this extensive cycle, the artist picks up the thread of his Pastorale pictures and takes it a step further. While in the earlier images he referenced the tradition of the idyllic motif in art, in Arkadia Block he explores the breach between nature and modern civilization: in 20 works arranged into a rigorously organized tableau, the landscape evolves into a cityscape. This Arkadia Block is supplemented with large-format ink drawings.
By fragmenting some of the images using horizontal and vertical »pictorial interferences,« and by reducing the range of colors, Ottersbach emphasizes the distanced relationship people have today to both nature and to urban architecture: Arcadia (and hence the ideal state of happiness) remains a figment of the artistic-poetic imagination.

Editor: Hubertus Gaßner, Petra Roettig
Authors: Hubertus Gaßner, Petra Roettig
Artists: Heribert C. Ottersbach

Hardcover
30 x 24,8 cm
120 pages
70 color ills.

German/English
available
ISBN 978-3-86828-048-7
29 Euro
2008