Helen Sear, a British artist with strong connections to the landscape and the sublime, is a romantic with an intellectual bent. With Inside the View, her first show at Klompching Gallery two years ago, her images combining landscape with portraiture were constructed by digitally layering in evocations of the traditional needlework of Finland to define a new landscape of the feminine.

In a new group of photographs now at Klompching, Beyond The View, Helen Sear continues her investigation into the sublime through her innovative use of image superimposition and erasure. Beyond The View was photographed in and around the agricultural lands south of Milan in response to the 'hidden' presence of women in this rural environment on the edge of the city, and with reference to the Northern Romantic tradition of landscape and portrait painting.

Three images by Helen Sear from the series Beyond The View, 2009. Copyright the artist, courtesy Klompching Gallery.

The title she has given this ongoing project is something of a play on words. Taking a cue from a series by Max Ernst (1891-1976) called Inside the Sight, which implies that art is integral with vision, Sear instead places the view inside the mind's eye of the viewer, implying that vision is an equivalent for the sublime in nature.

The eight prints currently installed at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, New York offer viewers an alternative reality in which the immersion of body, mind and spirit into nature is the game. The portraits are mostly head-and-shoulder shots of young women, which she has combined with landscapes photographs to create transparent blends that suggest both the irreality of the spirit transported and the physicality of the experience.

Not one to avoid risk, Sear has photographed her female subjects from the back. On entering the gallery, in fact, one immediately wonders why. But the incredible detail in the large-scale prints invites close scrutiny, which soon pays off with engaging combinations that support her stated mission.

Using Photoshop, and actions that are the stock in trade of graphic artists, Sear treads the ground of her predecessor, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who hand-collaged found embellishments, such as lace, with photography, to extol feminine beauty. Sear, however, draws by hand in the computer to create delicate net-like tracery of leaves and stems that erase through her landscape images. The transparency she achieves in these erasures subliminally unifies the component parts of each image, suggesting the beauty and delicacy of women's work and its importance to a society's culture.

Helen Sear: Beyond the View. Artist's reception: Thursday May 13, 6-8 pm. The exhibition continues through June 11, 2010. Klompching Gallery, 111 Front Street, Suite 206. DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY. For information: 212.796.2070 or email mailto:info@klompching.com

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