Timeless Landscape 5 (Erich Mercker, Ansicht von Mönch und Jungfrau im Berner Oberland, 1925)
2022
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Mateo Maté
Timeless Landscapes
26 Jun - 12 Sep 2025
This series of works aims to empirically demonstrate a theory born from an intuition.
I am attempting to carry out an act of justice—to denounce a silent and malicious theft. I seek to return to art what war has stolen from it.
Military camouflage would not exist without the discovery and development of a visual language and iconography particular to pre-Impressionism and Impressionism. These movements stripped all the natural elements of the landscape down to their basic forms and reinterpreted them as impressions of spots and colors, perceived by the human retina in a single glance.
From the very moment of that discovery—and proving that no human invention is ever innocuous or free from the risk of perverse application—military uniforms around the world changed radically in concept. They ceased to be merely symbols of representation and power and became offensive, albeit passive, weapons. From that point on, through a basic yet highly sophisticated iconography, uniforms began to imitate the natural environment in which different military units were to be deployed.
Artists from across the Western world contributed to the development of both applications of the same invention: Impressionism as the civilian application, and camouflage as the military one.
Using the uniforms of various armies around the world, I am trying to recompose and return this iconography to its artistic origins. For every texture, type of terrain, vegetation, or weather phenomenon that might define a landscape in a painting, there exists, within some military force on the planet, a uniform that can serve as the raw material—as if it were a tube of paint.
Mateo Maté
Artworks
Timeless Landscape 7 (Carlos de Haes, Cercanías de Vriesland en los Países Bajos,1878-84)
2022
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 11 (Johan Thomas Lundbye: Landskab ved Arresøe, 1838)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 13 (Edward Theodore Compton: "Grandes Jorasses", 1911)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 14. 2023 (Johan Thomas Lundbye: Zealand Landscape, 1840)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 15 (Edward Harrison Compton: “Cape Zafferano”, Sicily, 1927)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 16 (Albert Bierstadt: “Day's Beginning”. c. 1854)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 17 (Albert Bierstadt: “Moat Mountain Intervale”, 1862)
2023
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 20 (Edward Theodore Compton: “Grossglockner”, 1918)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 21. (Johan Thomas Lundbye: “Sunrise over the sea”, 1838)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 23. (Normann Adelsteen: “The Romsdal Fiord”, 1877)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 26. (Albert Bierstadt: “Looking down Yosemite Valley”, 1865)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 30. (Edward Harrison Compton: The Matterhorn from Riffelberg , 1917)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 31. (Asher Brown Durand: A River Landscape, 1858)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 33. (Willard Leroy Metcalf: The Cornish Hills, 1911)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 37. (Willard Leroy Metcalf: Hush of Winter. 1911)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas
Timeless Landscape 38. (Willard Leroy Metcalf: Hush of Winter. 1911)
2024
Uniforms adhered to canvas