Colliding Realities by Yang Lim
Onlookers with Jason Fielding’s Hidden Realms exhibition at Edmonton City Hall, 2024. Photograph by Jacob LeBlanc.
The name of Jason Fielding’s exhibition, Hidden Realms, may imply the presence of unseen realities of which people are unaware, but that could be accessed by those who keep their minds open. Deriving inspiration from elements within natural and human environments, Fielding’s graphite drawings reveal visually evocative, abstract landscapes that explore the interrelated themes of human society, nature, and industry.
Avoiding hyper-realism, Fielding encourages people to interpret and ascribe their own meanings, based on how they perceive the drawings and what they bring to them from their own experiences. For example, his work Planned Obsolescence depicts a limitless volume of rectangular objects that have been consigned to the trash. Fielding’s rendering of these objects includes a minimal amount of detail, which makes them sufficiently ambiguous and not readily identifiable. Upon closer inspection, some people may conclude that the drawing is representing discarded cell phones and smart phones, which are being rendered obsolete continually due to the ongoing production of new and more sophisticated models. However, other people may interpret the drawing differently and identify the objects to be something else. Regardless of what these objects are, this drawing’s representation of their sheer volume will stimulate reflection around the impact of human society on their surrounding environment and the extensiveness of waste that it generates.
Fielding’s other works also explore the tenuous state of the natural environment and its troubled relationship with human society. Pond depicts an aperture through which viewers can gaze upon a slice of nature, which visually accentuates the growing separation between humans and nature. In this work, nature is also portrayed as an entity under threat, with its layered imposition of images suggestive of clouds, grass, and fire. In Papillon, nature is disrupted by industrial development, with images suggestive of a butterfly’s wings being punctuated violently by a stake of wood that extends from one end of the drawing to the other as well as wood splinters that appear to burst forth from a black hole in the middle of its wings. Shapeshifter conveys a more surreal atmosphere with its inclusion of bulbous and string-like elements that are suggestive of natural phenomena, but that have been warped or impeded by human development.
The only colours in Fielding’s drawings are black, white, and varying gradations of grey, which connote an industrial-like atmosphere that appropriately complements the themes explored within them. Taken as a whole, Hidden Realms encourages people to contemplate each drawing closely and consider their own relationships with the surrounding natural and built environments.