Artist Statement – Vicky Anna Lardschneider
My work begins with landscape – not as an image to be reproduced, but as a living system shaped by time, material and continuous transformation.
I am interested in the traces these processes leave behind: in rock and soil, in surfaces and sediments, in organic materials and in forms that emerge, disappear and reappear over time. Landscapes may appear permanent, yet they are constantly being formed by forces that often operate too slowly, or across timescales too vast, for us to perceive directly. My work asks how these processes can become tangible – and what they reveal about our own relationship to time.
Material is central to this inquiry. I work with earth pigments, graphite, indigo and other natural materials, often gathered or encountered in relation to specific places. Their origin is not incidental. Materials carry something of the landscapes from which they emerge: their geology, climate, history and processes of transformation. Sometimes I bring these materials back into the studio; at other times, I work directly within the landscape itself.
This relationship between body, material and place has become increasingly important within my practice. During my residency in Ubud, Bali, working with locally sourced pigments, indigo and the visual and material language surrounding Canang Sari deepened my interest in how landscapes are shaped not only by geological processes, but also through human practices, repetition and ritual. My ongoing TRACES projects extend this research through direct physical encounters with landscape. Through frottage, raw linen comes into contact with rock surfaces, allowing structures formed over immense periods of time to leave a direct trace within the work. Weather, altitude, temperature, light and physical exposure become part of the conditions in which the work is made.
My forthcoming residency at Villa Lena Foundation in Tuscany continues this development through an extended engagement with place, material and memory. Rather than approaching a landscape with a predetermined image in mind, I am interested in spending time within it: observing, collecting, returning and allowing the work to emerge from what the place itself reveals.
Across these different approaches, I understand landscape as a living archive. It holds traces of processes that began long before us and will continue beyond us. At a moment in which human experience is increasingly shaped by acceleration, efficiency and the attempt to control time, these landscapes confront us with radically different temporal scales.
My work ultimately asks what changes when we begin to perceive time not as an abstract measure, but as a force – one that erodes, accumulates, transforms and continuously reshapes the world around us.
