Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Group of Artists in a Terrace..., 1975

The landscape is humanized by geometry, and that apparent paradox bears the seeds of its dissolution. Mathematical order, whose tautological and abstract nature is so far away from the organic, is however the clearest sign of human intervention on the territory; with that rational tool we try to interpret it, and put it at our service. When the landscape is perceived framed by geometry, aesthetic pleasure comes into resonance with the possessive gaze: if nature overwhelms us with its abrupt relief, cartography submits it with an even net. The hyperbolic extreme of enlightened reason leads to the dictatorship of indifferent modernity, and the anxiety of anomy before the orderly and random city segregates the nostalgia for the premodern aggregations, which built the unexpected harmony of the traditional city. We contrast the demanding discipline of ruled layouts with the orchestrated variety of lax developments, and try to imitate that attractive diversity affectedly agitating urban plans and interior landscapes. In the end, the fatigue of the mechanical order enters the eye, and when contemplating from the balcony the wise disarray of the organic city, the unease of modernity sinks into our minds and our moods...[+]