AXIS MUNDI

Beth Ganz

This body of work focuses on satellite Images of sacred mountains around the world-places where heaven and earth are thought to meet. The phenomenon of revering mountains as holy sites is a patte1n found in many cultures.

This oneness of experience finds a visual echo in the ub1qu1ty of images of the earth that are now available to any person w,th a computer and an internet c.onnect1on. What does the specificity of place mean when we can move across the surface of the earth in seconds and reduce everything to a series of pixels? To me, this process recalls abstract painting. which transforms the specific Into gesture and form. Rather than treat digital techno1ogy as necessarily destructive to human meaning and expenence. my work offers new ways of seeing that are reconc11able with the old. To this end. f combine 19th century photogravure technique w1th 21st century survedlance captures.

Ax.it Mundi consists of 64 coppetplate photogravures. The work 1s laid out tn a grid, which is an arbitrary conversion of the vJsual wortd into a flat space that happens both on the picture plane and m data processing. The title refers to the behef in a "wodd center or universal center." often conceived of as a mountain: a place where communicatmn between higher and Jower realms 1s possible. This proJect 1s a search for such a center In a world of decentralization and fragmentation.

Beth Ganz, New York, 2022