CLINT ENNS - Close Encounter

Paper: Hahnemühle Fine Art Archival Print
Sheet size: 40 × 40 cm with 1 cm white border around the motif.
Year: Edition of 2025
Edition: 5 + 1 AP
Signed, dated and with an edition number by the artist on a separate label.

Clint Enns – Close Encounters

A Western interior: wood paneling, cowboy hats, jeans. But the supposed cowboy is wearing a shimmering green alien mask, while his counterpart lies on the ground—defeated, exhausted, or perhaps simply overwhelmed. The scene seems like a still from a science fiction Western, a hybrid genre that never existed and suddenly becomes reality here.

Clint Enns' Close Encounter intertwines two myths: that of the cowboys, deeply rooted in the Manitoba prairie—Winnipeg as "cowboy land"—and that of the aliens, symbols of our modern fears and longings. Both figures, cowboy and alien, are projections: heroes and invaders, part of the endless self-dramatization of a culture that constantly oscillates between conquest and alienation.

The image poses the question: Is the real “stranger” the alien – or the cowboy himself, a symbol of a history that can no longer be saved?