AERIAL VIEWS

2011 - 2023

Marcus Jansen’s Aerial Views series explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and warfare. The works were inspired by Jansen’s experience flying by helicopter over a battle zone during the Gulf War, where he witnessed the landscape from an elevated military perspective. Years later, the accumulated paint on a studio tabletop reminded him of the devastated terrain he had seen from above, inspiring the series. Jansen transforms this memory into fragmented, abstract landscapes that resemble maps, geological formations, and aerial surveillance imagery. His elevated viewpoint challenges the traditional beauty of landscape painting by presenting territory as a site of conflict and destruction. The paintings therefore reflect not only what war looks like from above, but also how traumatic memories can resurface and be transformed through artistic practice.

Through Aerial Views, Jansen turns personal military experience into a broader meditation on the politics of looking. The distant aerial perspective suggests control and objectivity, yet the fractured surfaces reveal the human and psychological consequences hidden within such a view. His work ultimately demonstrates how contemporary landscape painting can function as a form of remembrance, questioning, and reflection on the experience of war.