Arguably the most famous American landscape artist, Ansel Adams, is known for photos that are notably absent of people and, in many ways, absent of time. The sweeping mountains, rivers and outcrops in his black-and-white images of national parkland depict an awe-inspiring absence. The land appears empty and eternal. It is an immensity whose only inhabitants are artist and viewer, who wander in sole possession of America’s wonders.

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As an indigenous Grand Portage Ojibwe and Anishinaabe artist, Andrea Carlson’s approach to and understanding of landscape is very different from that of the tradition represented by Adams. Her first small but impressive solo show “Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizon” on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through February 2 includes work that presents landscape not as empty, but as full: of history, of trauma, of memory, of reverence, of time. Carlson’s imagery is sometimes dreamlike and private, resisting immediate interpretation, apprehension, or possession. But it’s also intimate and welcoming, asking you not to enter and take hold but to relate. “Sometimes,” Carlson told Observer, “I think about land, or landscapes, as portraiture, because we [indigenous artists] believe in the livingness of the land.”

One way that Carlson conflates landscape as portraiture is by creating images that are segmented and multiple. The 12-foot-long by 3-foot-high Cast A Shadow is made up of eleven smaller 1-foot by 2.5-foot segments. The painting(s) use multiple mediums—oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, colored pencil—to create a collage-like vista in which ambiguous human-ish figures float against a background of mountains. Two large........

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