CIPHERS

Christoph Gielen's aerial views offer a look at America's most aberrant and unusual sprawl forms in ways we usually don't get to see them: from far above the ground - a vantage point that reveals both the intricate geometry as well as the idiosyncratic allure of these developments. Here, encountering sprawl becomes an aesthetic experience that at the same time leaves us with a sense of foreboding, of seeing the 'writing on the wall'. At once fascinating and profoundly unsettling, these photographs detail the potential ramifications of unchecked urbanization. When these settlements were developed, neither distance from work place nor gasoline prices much mattered in determining the locations of new constructions. These places are relics from an era that was entirely defined by a belief in unlimited growth, of bigger is better. The startling extent of those practices, and their inherent wastefulness, come to light in Gielen's pictures - as if looking at a microcosm of non-sustainability through a giant magnifier.