Lev Ko

I. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 2025

My Art Studio thesis exhibition restores digital cartographic data to an analog form through the translational medium of intaglio printmaking. Composed of 1,056 etched and hand-printed works, the final 14’x 12’ work relies on scale, repetition, and deletion as key visual and conceptual techniques. The project actively engages with art historical critiques of American landscape artwork, specifically during Westward Expansion, that depicted “empty” (or violently emptied) natural vistas of newly acquired and unsettled territories. As an analogous form of American landscape art, my digital work brings these art historical criticisms into the present day, tracking the progression of the American empire and its history of seeing and depicting land through ever-evolving artistic and technological lenses.

This exhibition is the result of a two semester critique-based Art Studio Thesis tutorial and was unanimously awarded high honors by the Wesleyan Studio Art Faculty.