Jordon Schranz
by Grant Moser
April 2003
billburg.com
Jordon Schranz's contribution, "Arrivals and Departures," is a collection of paintings centered on movement, transience, change, and the stillness of time. Cut off from - yet immersed in - the past, Schranz's paintings serve as memories; nostalgic blurred images of familiar moments.
Full of melancholy, the mainly over-sized works scream detachment, yet pull us in further. The works serve as recollections of something we didn't witness, but feel we must have. Schranz paints in relation to where he wants the viewer to be in relation to the picture; from both a physical and emotional perspective.
The works feature mainly planes; in the air, at airport terminals, on a deserted runway. However, there is also a painting of a couple, and one of a chain link fence separating us from a hazy image of a car. His choice of settings reflects human greetings, meetings, and leavings.
Time in an airport or an airplane is "stopped time," a combination of the past, present, and future. There is no time zone. We also know the airplanes have people in them, but we never see them. We ourselves create an illusion of people in an otherwise vacant landscape of machines and space. Their existence is both outside the realm of human time, and is dependent entirely upon humans. Just like memories.