Look at the image above. You’re probably thinking it’s just a normal, straightforward landscape shot. Beautiful yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. A particularly fiery sunset silhouette of your average mountain top, perhaps? Or maybe a burning forest somewhere in the Sierra Nevada?
Well, it is neither of those things and it’s definitely far from being ordinary. The truth is this landscape scene was captured from outside a fish tank. And the landscape itself, well, it’s in fact a meticulously-designed diorama inside that same fish tank.
It’s what artist Kim Keever does best, born out his natural curiosity towards nature, a certain aptitude for creation, and a talent for perceiving mimicry in nature. Of his fascinating work, Keever says,
It is amazing how some things mimic examples in the real world. Paint will flow through the water like cloud formations we see every day. It’s an excellent example of fractals… mathematical and visual mimicry of large and small systems. A rock can look like a mountain and a mountain can look like a rock. One hundred miles of coastline can look like ten thousand miles of coastline or vise versa.
If that’s something you haven’t realized before, you’ll definitely notice it now, especially after you look at the rest of his photographs from this landscape series. Inspired by nature’s spectacular scenes, he builds landscape dioramas by hand in a 6-foot-long fish tank, fills the tank up with water, sets the mood or time of day by using pillow stuffing and paint pigments, and then takes of photos of them.
The results, as wonderfully surreal as they are, are so uncannily similar to that of the real thing that you’ll probably never know the difference. Whatever Keever does, we cannot argue that there’s a certain magic to it.
See more of his amazing creations after the jump.
Keever is having a solo exhibition Waterhouse & Dodd New York of his latest series, Abstract, at from April 2 to May 6, with an opening night on April 1st from 6 to 8 pm. For more details, follow this link or contact the gallery by email or by phone at +1 212 717 9100. You can see some of his work from that series at the end of this post.
Keever’s studio and set-up
The Landscape Series
A preview of his latest series, Abstract