John Mann: Terra Incognita
John Mann, Untitled (Moskva)
According to his website, rockpapercloud.com, John Mann “makes images.” Which means, to some, that he dwells more in the realm of ideas than objects; images, after all, are projections, Platonic ideals of form rather than their messy, concrete realizations, full of compromise and accommodation, that often fall short of the mark.
To create his work—because one must grant the audience some access to those otherwise inaccessible mental chimeras—Mann uses existing images, in the forms of charts, atlases, globes, and other products of the cartographer. He dismantles and transforms these approximations of the physical world we inhabit into disarmingly simple projections of his own. In doing so, he reinvests the mapping with mystery, converts them back into terra (at least partially) incognita, landscapes that verge on the familiar but remain in the realm of the incomprehensible or enigmatic.
John Mann, Untitled (Libya)
Maps, of course, contain their own vexing problems of image versus reality. No flat rectangular map can accurately reproduce the spherical globe, just as no photograph can do much more than imply a semblance of the real world. But we live with compromise and habit. Which projection is the lesser evil—Mercator, Gall-Peters, Robinson, or Winkle Tripel?
Mann’s images toy with standards of surface and scale. They undermine the authority of cartographic intentions, though respectfully and in a fashion that seeks to distill new truths. These are rarely puns or political one-liners, though one could make something of “a wall of water” (in “Untitled (ocean)”) or posit “Libya” and its geographic neighbors as a rogue state, propped up on a scarred, desert-like tabletop landscape of unmapped origin (“Untitled (Libya)”).
John Mann, Untitled (Ocean)
But Mann’s work doesn’t push in these directions. The images read more gently, with open-endedness, as zen koans, perhaps, seeking higher ground through mild provocation. They make use of photographic syntax in beguiling ways, to lead us into revelatory encounters with the idea of land, scape, and form.
John Mann, Untitled (Florianopolis)
About the artist: John Mann (b.1972) was born in the American East, raised in the Midwest, and schooled in the West. Upon graduation from the University of New Mexico with an MFA in Photography in 2002, he headed back east to start the cycle all over again. He now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he makes images and teaches at Florida State University. His work has also traveled, and has been exhibited internationally. (from Mann’s website, www.rockpapercloud.com )
All images are from John Mann’s series Folded in Place:
1. Untitled (Libya)
2. Untitled (To France)
3. Untitled (ocean)
4. Untitled (Equator)
5. Untitled (Lake Michigan)
6. Untitled (Reliability Diagram)
7. Untitled (Florianopolis)
8. Untitled (Divide)
9. Untitled (Twenty Miles)
10. Untitled (Lakes)
11. Untitled (Micronesia)
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