Thanks to ever-developing technologies of vision, Paglen argues, \u201cthe geography of seeing is changing.\u201d It is such processes of transformation that have inspired his longstanding interest in notions of the visible and the invisible, which intersect with landscapes both physical and digital. These oppositions undergird his work as an artist, as he asks, \u201cWhat happens to an image when you push it to the point where it breaks? When you push vision to the point where it collapses?\u201d Shane is asking these questions too, although he uses paint rather than photography to push on the edges that hold form. But whereas Paglen\u2019s experimentation with technologies of vision is a way for him to interrogate systems of state control, Shane\u2019s seems more of a broad-scale longing for what was. This concern is expressed in the show\u2019s title, Solastalgia<\/em>, a term coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe environmentally induced distress. It\u2019s like homesickness, but instead of distance being the cause of separation from \u201chome\u201d and the subsequent melancholy, it is a lament for a loved place that is irrevocably changed by environmental degradation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Solastalgia<\/em>, Shane challenges the powerful triumvirate of vision, landscape, and memory, plumbing the deepening relationship between the latter two to encourage a reconsideration of what the term \u201cenvironment\u201d means on a tangible level beyond its use as a political catchphrase in a climate-critical period. This series of \u201canti-static,\u201d or alternatively \u201cactive,\u201d images participates in Western landscape traditions (yes, plural), following, for example, the primary tenet of W. J. T. Mitchell\u2019s Theses on Landscape<\/em>: \u201cLandscape is not a genre of art but a medium.\u201d As such, each painting speaks to process as a competition between generative and destructive forces (as you can\u2019t have one without the other). Cumulatively, the paintings render homage to the twenty- If there were not such attention to detail, such elegance and delicacy, the paintings in this collection could be considered rogue images documenting digital trespassing as a proxy for a physical breach of boundaries. They are landscape portraits (this hybrid is possible) of sites normally off limits or overlooked due to their mundanity or instrumentality. For example, a shipyard made identifiable through the distorted form of an ocean liner is the subject in Plasma Port<\/em> (2021). It is a curious play on the enduring pictorial maritime tradition; in this case the sky, rather than holding the atmospheric accoutrements of clouds, is an unmottled shade of red\u200a\u2014\u200aa colour equated with alarm. Meanwhile, Remote Sensing<\/em> (2022) captures a nondescript agglomeration of brutalist architecture, backgrounded by the Romantic trappings of majestic mountains. The composition is like a message to be deciphered via a code of muted greys and pinks; a vibrant green triggers a remembrance or conjuring of humid West Coast forests. What betrays the idea that these images are hurried snapshots taken with the adrenaline of trespass is the lack of optical blur\u200a\u2014\u200athe signature of authenticity of the documentary image\u200a\u2014\u200awhich here is replaced by the representation of processes of melt and disintegration rendered in crisp painterly technique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paintings in the collection are, like the satellite photographs on which they are based, composite imagery. Shane uses layering strategies in both the source and the output of the project. Taking a geographer\u2019s approach to reading the Google Earth images on his computer screen, he controls the layers of information made available in this digital mapping platform, and then translates one stratum to canvas (another screen), while retaining vestiges of cartographic graticule and digital framework. The brooding Pixel Storm<\/em> (2021) is a competition of such linear elements. White gridwork, dividing the starry blackness of deep space from the ground below, reaches forward, as an undulating proxy for land awash in yellow and green in the foreground pushes against the momentum to force architecture and landscape features into the gulf of the background. Magically, there is no vanishing point to mark this collision of energies. This is one example of Shane\u2019s impressive perspectival skill: he has rendered an oblique aerial perspective on a perpendicular plane, and we are all here to believe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the references to painting, photography, landscape, and portrait have yet to convince you, then I will announce how profoundly and effectively hybrid Solastalgia<\/em> is. It is the hybridity of media and content, drawing on both painterly technique and digital syntax while juxtaposing built environments with the natural world (remember that?) that makes the collection so relevant. This combination also makes the collection viciously beautiful. These works are guaranteed to maintain their relevancy for years to come thanks to a world (itself viciously beautiful) caught up in a tailspin of climate change, war, and asymmetry of economy, lest the tailspin itself come to its own fiery end.<\/p>\n![\"105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_RemoteSensing\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_RemoteSensing.jpg\")
Eclipsing Variables<\/em>, 2022.
Photo : courtesy of the artist & McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al
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first century\u2019s ironic adulation of the notion of \u201cdevelopment\u201d at the cost of devastation, by capturing environments and architectures in flux. Standing before these canvases, which could just as well be windows to the external world as screens to a digital one, viewers question whether the sometimes-abstract shapes are coming into focus or falling apart.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_Solastalgia_01_lr20220426\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_Solastalgia_01_lr20220426.jpg\")
Solastalgia<\/em>, exhibition view, 2022.
Photo : Guy L\u2019Heureux, courtesy of McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n![\"105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_Solastalgia_02\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/105_CRL_Valcourt_Matt-Shane_Solastalgia_02.jpg\")
Solastalgia<\/em>, exhibition view, 2022.
Photo : Guy L\u2019Heureux, courtesy of McBride Contemporain, Montr\u00e9al
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