Ohio Public Art- Gustavo Prado in Akron

 Akron, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Mixed Media, Ohio Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jan 312025
 

Pictured are selections from Gustavo Prado’s Tempo, located in the windows of the University of Akron’s Polsky Building. You can also see the pieces lit up at night which give it a very different look. It is one of several works that are part of Curated Storefront’s ongoing project to transform downtown Akron.

From their website about the work-

Employing sculpture, performance, photography, and video, Gustavo Prado examines shifts in perspective to produce works that investigate different conceptions of reality. He focuses on light, site, and context to create a body of work that dissects the need to constantly negotiate inhabited space as a means of deriving an understanding of personal identity.

Exploring the complexities inherent in the act of gazing, Prado makes inquiries into a series of notions that are both intrinsic and extraneous to the field of art, such as surveillance, appropriation, voyeurism, aggregates, artificial intelligence, narcissism, information overload, and the right to privacy. He uses off-the-shelf materials that he slightly alters, enabling viewers to recognize the source material while understanding potential deviations from the intended use. Through processes of combining seemingly disparate materials and subject matter, Prado tests cultural assumptions of what can or should belong together.

Ohio Public Art- Curated Storefront’s “Outside the Box” in Akron

 Akron, Akron, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ohio Art Shows, Ohio Street Art, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Street Art
Jan 312025
 

 

Curated Storefront is an Akron arts organization started in 2016 that is working to turn downtown Akron into an arts destination. Their projects include a collection of public murals and art in store windows. They also offer studio spaces to local artists.

One of their projects, Outside the Box, is a series of up-cycled shipping containers that house pop-up galleries and rotating murals.

Below are more selections from Outside the Box and information on the works from their website.

El Mac, “Stardust”

From the information plaque-

This mural titled Stardust depicts El Mac’s son as a baby looking up towards the sky, which creates imagery that the artist hopes “can be relatable to people and hopefully it suggests youthfulness and new beginnings. I had fun with the rendering , patterns, movement, and shapes. It was challenging for me and I think it’s beautiful, so I hope others do too.”

Palehorse, “Garuda”

About Palehorse’s mural from Curated Storefront–

Painting of the deity Garuda from Hindu mythology. Garuda (King of Birds) symbolizes the harmonious union of earthly strength and celestial freedom. As the divine messenger, he traverses between realms, embodying the bridge between humanity and the sacred. His outstretched wings form a shield of protection, a testament to his role as guardian and defender against adversity. Garuda’s presence inspires us to embrace our inner courage and navigate life’s challenges with unwavering determination. Just as he faces the serpents of life, we too can rise above obstacles, guided by his example. As you gaze upon this mural, may Garuda’s symbolism ignite your spirit, reminding you of your own capacity to soar to new heights, find peace amidst chaos, and stand strong in the face of all trials. Jai Guru! OM Garuda!

With over 20 years of experience as a professional illustrator, the catalogue of work created by Palehorse now serves as a breadcrumb trail, highlighting his intense curiosity and a relentless quest for deeper meaning and self-discovery. Years of seeking and following delightful and mysterious curiosities, eventually led to a devoted spiritual practice, arising from an ever-expanding love for sacred art, mystical scriptures, ancient cultures, plant medicine ceremonies, world mythology and travel.

The artwork of Palehorse aims to become more refined and meaningful as he increasingly becomes more spiritually adventurous through the years. His aesthetic harnesses the ancient power of traditional Thai ornamental design, blended with Indian motifs and symbols derived from the Thangka paintings of Tibetan Buddhism. As a follower of Paramhansa Hogananda, these inspirations are then filtered through the lens of an American yogi/psychonaut/illustrator, who was born in the late 70’s and grew up skateboarding, surfing, getting tattooed and playing guitar in metal bands.

John Comunale “The First Energy Monster”, Recycled tires and golfballs

John Comunale, whose work is pictured above, is an Akron artist with many works located around the city.

Studio Haz – Joshua Hall and Diana Paz- “This and That”

About the Studio Haz mural from Curated Storefront-

This mural is a visual dialog, a conversation between order and fluid organic forms. It is the first collaboration between the two artists.

Diana Paz is a Venezuelan Multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, FL. She has been fully dedicated to her art since 2012, right after graduating from her graphic design studies. Navigating between artistic expressions, she explores materials, shapes, spaces, textures and colors; reinterpreting elements from her native region as well as others taken from her everyday life. The result is a balanced union of elements; coming all-together in the cleanest and simplest way.

Joshua Hall, AKA Baghead, (born January 5, 1988) is a contemporary Latin- American artist from Miami, Florida. His work is derived from 90’s skateboarding, street typography, and early animation. He is known for his wooden sculptures as well as being a muralist. In his practice, Joshua reflects on his suburban adolescents; recounting them in fluid, abstracted and sometimes sculptural forms.

Steiner, “Repetitive Nature”

About Steiner and Repetitive Nature–

The bright and psychedelic colors and mutation of the third eye on the leopards represent human negative effects on nature. However, nature is ferocious (like a leopard) and fights back, reclaiming what is left behind by humans in a cycle that is repetitive. Nature finds a way.

Raised on surf/skate art and comics, and influenced by the likes of Jim Phillips and Todd McFarlane, Steiner began spray painting walls during middle school in the 90s. After traveling abroad and formal art training he returned to his street art and graffiti roots. He has lived and painted in San Francisco and New York, and now resides in Los Angeles. His work is reminiscent of the Toxic Avenger. It shows man’s effect on nature and manipulation of the environment. His work often has mutated beasts with multiple eyes, bright un-earthy colors and smoke ring cloud (pollution) backgrounds … so the 3 eyed Simpsons fish is a good reference to sum it up … an actual issue with a somewhat humorous delivery.

Axel Void (Alejandro Hugo Dorda Mevs), “Untitled”

L.E.O. (Reginald O’Neal), “Dr. John Henry Clarke And the Mundari People”

About L.E.O. (Reginald O’ Neal)–

L.E.O. (Reginald O’Neal), born in 1992 in Miami, Florida, began painting in 2012 and soon met his friend and mentor, Alejandro Dorda, also known as Axel Void, who would teach him classically.

In 2014, L.E.O. took his first trip to Europe to complete murals in Austria, Norway, and Spain, as well as exhibit in a collective show alongside his teacher in Berlin, Germany. In the years since, Reggie has focused on canvas work, residencies, and murals that embody his community surroundings, experiences and beliefs.

Gabriela Ayza Aschmann, “Momentum Absence Act”

From Curated Storefront about the Gabriela Ayza Aschmann’s mural-

It has two faces. What we see and what may be behind. Is it the absence of oneself that creates emotional instability? Sometimes we are in a sea of fire and we have to warp to hold on to ourselves so we can be our own lifesaver. With the vertigo of falling, you create a dance that in the end only you can learn to enjoy. Emily Dickinson wrote, “I was falling and in each crash hit, I ran into a world.”

Born in 1991 Cologne, Germany, Gabriela Ayza Aschmann is a Spanish-German artist currently based in Miami, Florida. She lived and studied in Andalusia, graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Seville, Spain. She continued learning with workshops and follow ups from different artists. In 2020, Gabriela attended her first artist residency with Void_ Projects in Miami, FL. Later, she followed her next artist residency at Gotulist Froyar, Feror Island, Denmark. Her last two shows titled I have an idiot inside me and Mom, let me be an animal for one day opened in Miami, FL where she presented a mixture of her personal collection of paintings.

Her practice represents the search for the poetic. She begins with considering that listening to ourselves and our environment brings us closer to the core of our existence. In her paintings one can find humor, sweetness and hardness at the same time. The artist observes and empathizes how humans are, measurably, beasts and brutes. Bluntly, she questions why humanity hides its beastiality: What is so dangerous about our depths? Her work is focused on oil painting, although in her process we can find poetry, theater, analog photography and other sculptural aspects.

 

Johnny Robles, “Gloria Bow”

About Johnny Robles and the mural from Curated Storefront–

Johnny Robles is a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, technology, and nature. Studies in color theory, geometry, and science, combined with his natural and spiritual world interests are central to his work.

The artwork’s title, Gloria Bow, is derived from a glory rainbow, a halo of interlocking colors made up of tiny droplets of water reflecting sunlight scattered back towards the viewer. This phenomenon we see in nature can be experienced from tall buildings, a mountain top, or an airplane. Over the years, the artist’s experiences of observing glories have marveled and served him as reminders that nature seeks each of us. This painting intends to engage passersby in a moment of solitude, clarity, or stillness.

 

SHINE Mural Festival 2017- Mikael B

 Art, Artists, Florida Street Art, Painting / Painters, Public Art, St. Petersburg Street Art, Street Art
Jan 292025
 

This mural by Los Angeles based artist Mikael B was created for the 2017 SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.

For the most recent work by Mikael B, check out his Instagram.

Florida Artists- Edel Alvarez Galban (AGalban)- Portrait of José Martí

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Clearwater, Florida Art Shows, Florida Travel, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, Places to Visit, Tampa, Ybor City
Jan 282025
 

Marti a flor de labios (Marti on the lips) is a portrait of Cuban poet, writer, journalist, philosopher, and activist José Martí by Cuban artist Edel Alvarez Galban (AGalban). The painting was part of the 2023 exhibition El Arte: Echos of Cuba at the Clearwater Library in Florida. Galban emigrated to the United States in 1995, later moving to St. Petersburg, Florida in 2001 where he works in both the medical profession and the arts.

José Martí was born in Havana on January 28th, 1853 and died in 1895 during the Battle of Dos Rios, fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain. He traveled to Tampa Bay’s Latin Quarter, Ybor City, on several occasions while in exile to give speeches and to raise funds to support his cause.

Parque Amigos de Jose Marti (Friends of Jose Marti Park) in Ybor City features a statue of Martí and a plaque. The land was gifted to the Republic of Cuba in 1956 and was once home to the boarding house of Afro-Cuban activist Paulina Pedroso. She was friends with Martí and he stayed with her during his visits to the area.

 

Jo Baer (1929-2025)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jan 242025
 

“Snow-Laden Primeval (Meditations, on Log Phase and Decline rampant with Flatulent Cows and Carbon Cars)”, 2020, oil paint on canvas

Blockade ‘The Risen’, 1960-1961/2019, Oil on canvas / RISEN from the New York 1960-1961 painting, reconstructed in Amsterdam in 2019

Artist Jo Baer passed away this Tuesday at the age of 95. Her long career was marked by her transition away from the abstract works she became known for to figuration. She destroyed several of her original minimalist paintings but would later reproduce them in 2019 from archival images.

The works above are from her 2020 concurrent exhibitions at Pace Gallery– The Risen/Originals.

More on her life and career from Pace Gallery–

Born in Seattle in 1929, Baer studied biology at the University of Washington—where she also enrolled in introductory painting and drawing courses—and earned a graduate degree in psychology from the New School for Social Research in New York. She began her artistic career in Los Angeles in the early 1950s before returning to New York in 1960. There, she would become a key figure in the city’s burgeoning minimalist scene with her hard-edge paintings featuring bands of color around their edges. She also painted symbols and objects in some of her early works, often examining sexual and gender politics in these more figurative compositions.

Over the course of the 1960s, her paintings were exhibited alongside works by her mostly male peers—including Kenneth Noland, Robert Mangold, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt—and she presented her first-ever solo show at Fischbach Gallery in New York in 1966. Following her mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 1975, she relocated to Europe, first living in England and Ireland before settling in Amsterdam in 1984.

Baer’s search for renewal in the 1970s brought her to “radical figuration,” a term she coined in her now famous 1983 letter to Art in America, declaring that she was “no longer an abstract artist.” The term, which the artist later moved away from, describes a midway point between abstraction and figuration in which she could utilize partial, edited, or layered images—both found and created—to generate space for a new language within painting.

During her years in England and Ireland, Baer departed from pure abstraction in her work, developing a new aesthetic grounded in images, text, and prehistoric signs that combined the new, the old, and the mythical. Over the nine years she spent living in Smarmore Castle in County Louth in Ireland, Baer became fascinated by the region’s Neolithic history, opening her practice up to ancient histories of civilization. Seeing painting as a continually evolving tradition that could not be easily broken down into neat stylistic or periodic categories, Baer found as much inspiration in archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and geography as in contemporary culture.

“I wanted more subject matter and more meaning,” the artist once said of her decision to move away from Minimalism. “There was an awful lot going on in the world, and I didn’t just want to sit there and draw straight lines.”

Below, in this video from the gallery, she discusses her body of work.

David Lynch 1946-2025

 Art, Artists, Books, Films, Miscellaneous, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Quotes, Television, Video and Film
Jan 202025
 

Still from “Mulholland Drive”

Club Silencio scene with Rebekah Del Rio from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive

Today would have been artist and filmmaker David Lynch’s 79th birthday.

Although it was sad to hear of his passing, it was such a joy to spend the weekend looking through his artwork, reading the tributes from those who knew him, and rewatching his films and the documentary about him, The Art Life.

He also wrote Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, a short book filled with his thoughts on transcendental meditation, his films, digital video, creativity and more- worth checking out. Below is a short clip from one of his interviews with The Atlantic.

He also acted occasionally, both in his Twin Peaks series and in other projects. Below he plays another famous director, John Ford, in a clip from Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans.

And here he is on Louis C.K.’s show Louie.

David Lynch’s creative legacy will continue to influence and inspire people for many years to come. He was one of the greats.

Los Angeles Art Shows- “Post Human” at Jeffrey Deitch

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Jan 162025
 

Charles Ray “Family Romance”, 1993, and Ashley Bickerton “F.O.B.:Tied (White)”, 1993/2018

Charles Ray “Family Romance”, 1993

Maurizio Cattelan “WE”, 2010

Tishan Hsu, “mammal-screen-green-2”, 2024

Work by Josh Kline

“Untitled”, 2008-9, and “Two Breasts”, 1990, by Robert Gober

Mike Kelley, “Brown Star”, 1991 (left) and “The Judge”, 2018, by Jana Euler (painting on right)

Wanghechi Mutu, “One Cut”, 2018, (center sculpture); photographs by Cindy Sherman, 2010/2023

“Pep Talk”, 2024, by Cajsa von Zeipel and Jamian Juliano-Villani, “Women”, 2024, (painting on right)

Post Human, the current group exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles location, continues an artistic investigation of humanity that began with the 1992 exhibition of the same name. Some of the over forty artists (and even some of the works) were in the previous iteration, but now their work is placed alongside others made more recently. Seeing them together offers viewers a chance to  contemplate the shifts and continuations in culture, technology, and what it means to be human.

From the gallery-

“Post Human was virtually a manifesto trumpeting a new art for a new breed of human,” wrote the art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum discussing the impact of the exhibition in the October 2004 issue of Artforum.

In 1992, Post Human, curated by Jeffrey Deitch, brought together the work of thirty-six young artists interested in technological advancement, social and aesthetic pluralism, and new frontiers of body and identity transformation. Through their art, these artists were exploring the same questioning of traditional notions of gender, sexuality and self-identity that was—and still is—taking place in the world at large. Capturing a developing social and scientific phenomenon, Post Human theorized a new approach to the construction of the self and interpretation of what defines being human. The exhibition set the agenda for the 1990s, and its influence on artists and philosophers led to a new field of academic study.

In her book Posthuman Feminism (2022), the philosopher and feminist theoretician Rosi Braidotti credits Deitch for capturing “the avant-garde spirit of the age by foregrounding the role of technology in blurring binary boundaries between subjects and objects, humans and non-humans.” She adds, “Post Human showed also that art assumed a much more central role as it merged with science, computerization and biotechnology in further re-shaping the human form and perfecting a flair for the artificial.”

The catalogue of the 1992 exhibition, with its visual essay and innovative design by the late Dan Friedman, also proved lasting relevance. Deitch’s influential essay predicted many of the scientific and sociological shifts that have since shaped our cultural and social environment, even the pandemic.

More than thirty years later, Post Human at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, revisits the theme of the exhibition, bringing the discourse into the present. The show includes several of the key figures who participated in the 1992 exhibition in dialogue with some of the most interesting artists continuing the exploration of these themes today. In keeping with the social and technological trends that inspired it, the interest in figuration of the original artists and the younger generations presented in the show is conceptual rather than formal.

Much of the then-new figurative work was descriptive of the “real” world but cannot, in fact, be called “realistic” in the conventional sense. That is because so much of the “real” world the artists were reacting to had become artificial. With the concept of the real disintegrating through an acceptance of the multiplicity of reality models and the embrace of artificiality, Realism as it was once known was no longer possible. This new figurative art may have actually marked the end of Realism rather than its revival.

Fully integrated into our pop psychology, the term “posthuman” is now used in everyday conversations and has come to primarily identify with the trope of the cyborg. This exhibition, like the 1992 show, however, examines multiple declinations and aspects of the postmodern construction of personality and the engineering and transcendence of the human body. The artists in the exhibition embrace notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness. Cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, the “cultured body” lends itself to reflect on a variety of concerns that define our age.

Several works in the exhibition will embrace the biometrical aestheticization of the human body to address the decay paranoia, the social conflict over genetic engineering and the use of biotechnologies, and the conversation around the limits of “natural” life.” Artists have long engaged with the threats of biometric surveillance, the possibility of virtual reality overtaking our physical one, the accelerating real-time consumption of experience, and the automation of the workforce. As AI’s ability to fulfill our creative and specialized needs has reached mass fruition, artists are confronting the impact of what was once considered speculative science fiction, an everyday reality.

Post Human was first presented at FAE, Musée D’art Contemporain, Pully/Lausanne (June 14–September 13, 1992) and traveled to Castello di Rivoli—Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli/Turin (October 1–November 22, 1992), Deste Foundation, House of Cyprus, Athens (December 3, 1992–February 14, 1993), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (March 12–May 9, 1993), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (June 23–October 10, 1993). A number of the works shown in 1992-1993 are now in international museum collections. Matthew Barney’s REPRESSIA (decline) (1991) is now in the collection of LACMA, where it was on view in 2023. Posthumanism has since been the subject of countless books, movies and high-profile exhibitions.

Artists in the exhibition: Isabelle Albuquerque, 
Matthew Barney
, Ivana Bašić
, Frank Benson, 
Ashley Bickerton, 
Maurizio Cattelan
, Chris Cunningham
, John Currin, 
Alex Da Corte, 
Olivia Erlanger
, Jana Euler
, Rachel Feinstein, 
Urs Fischer, 
Pippa Garner
, Robert Gober
, Hugh Hayden, 
Damien Hirst
, Tishan Hsu, 
Pierre Huyghe, 
Anne Imhof
, Alex Israel, 
Arthur Jafa, 
Jamian Juliano-Villani
, Mike Kelley, 
Josh Kline, 
Jeff Koons
, Paul McCarthy
, Sam McKinniss, 
Mariko Mori
, Takashi Murakami
, Wangechi Mutu
, Cady Noland, 
Charles Ray
, Cindy Sherman, 
Kiki Smith
, Hajime Sorayama, 
Anna Uddenberg, 
Cajsa von Zeipel
, Jeff Wall
, Jordan Wolfson, and 
Anicka Yi

This show closes Saturday, 1/18/25.

Los Angeles Art Shows- “Giant Robot Biennale 5” at the Japanese American National Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Drawing, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jan 042025
 

Work by James Jean

Work by Luke Chueh

Work by Giorgiko, moniker of husband and wife duo Darren and Trisha Inouye. These works are an homage to Darren’s family as Japanese Americans that experienced the WWII era.

Work by Mike Shinoda

Work by Yoskay Yamamoto

Work by Yoskay Yamamoto

Giant Robot Biennale 5 at the Japanese American National Museum features artwork from Sean Chao, Felicia Chiao, Luke Chueh, Giorgiko, James Jean, Taylor Lee, Mike Shinoda, Rain Szeto, and Yoskay Yamamoto.

From the museum about the exhibition and Giant Robot–

Giant Robot launched in 1994 as a hand-assembled zine in Los Angeles and grew into a staple of Asian American alternative pop culture. Since 2007, JANM has partnered with Eric Nakamura, founder of Giant Robot, to produce the biennale that is dedicated to showcasing the diverse and creative works brought together by the Giant Robot ethos.

This year marks Giant Robot’s thirtieth anniversary. While the zine and magazine are no longer published, its legacy and influence are indelible parts of our culture. The shop and gallery continue to thrive in Sawtelle’s Japantown and reflect the independent spirit of its origins. Giant Robot continues to be a highly influential brand encompassing many aspects of Asian and Asian American popular culture. These galleries contain a cross section of Giant Robot’s stalwart artists, emerging talents, and friends.

The video below from PBS Artbound is a great documentary about the Giant Robot project.

This exhibition closes Sunday, 1/5/25. On the same day the museum is free and hosting the 2025 Oshogatsu Family Festival- Year of the Snake event which will include cultural performances, crafts and other activities.

 

Los Angeles Art Shows- “Josh Kline: Climate Change” at MOCA

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Jan 032025
 

Josh Kline’s installations for Climate Change at MOCA use a variety of different mediums to explore the environmental issues of today while focusing on a potential dystopian future.

From the museum-

Looking at our era through a lens of labor and class, Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia) speculates in his art on some of the most urgent issues facing the world in the coming decades. His largest body of work is an as-yet-untitled cycle of immersive installations, organized as chapters, that explores key political, economic, technological, ecological, and biological questions of the twenty-first century. Climate Change, gathered together for the first time at MOCA, is the cycle’s fourth chapter.

Climate Change is both an exhibition and a total work of art—a visceral suite of science-fiction installations that imagines a future sculpted by ruinous climate crisis and the ordinary people destined to inhabit it. Begun in 2018 and produced in sections over the last six years, the works in Climate Change were largely made during the COVID-19 pandemic and informed by events during those difficult years. In its profound disruption of ordinary life, the pandemic became, for Kline, a cipher for the looming climate catastrophe and unprecedented disruption of our lives that scientists predict will accelerate in the years ahead. Using dystopia as a point of entry rather than a diagnosis, he invites us to place ourselves within it and consider the rear view. What happens in a world where the systems built to sustain and extend capitalist enterprise and global hegemony melt down their own foundations? Is this the future that we want to live in? Can we build a new and more hopeful world from the ruins?

The images above are from Kline’s sculptural installation Personal Responsibility. Although set in the future, the rise of tent cities around the country today in combination with the need for temporary structures after recent destructive storms, make this work feel contemporary.

From the museum-

Personal Responsibility (2023-24), the core of Kline’s project Climate Change, is a sculptural installation set in the future, in the aftermath of climate disaster. Borrowing their forms from the temporary shelters used by refugees and migrants in the United States and around the world, the tentlike structures here serve as both home and workplace for “essential workers” — the individuals who will still have to physically go into work, often at great personal risk, while those in higher-paying jobs can work from home in comfort and safety.

The installation also features two sets of related videos. Capture and Sequestration (2023) centers four iconic commodities made from materials that powered America’s rise as the world’s preeminent military, economic, and cultural power: sugar, tobacco, cotton, and oil. Through these materials, it is possible to trace the lineage of human-made global warming and climate change back through America’s global empire and the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the most painful parts of US history —the enslavement of Africans and the theft of Indigenous land. The other videos are fictional interviews with people living through catastrophic climate change in a future America. Although set decades from now, these videos are informed by extensive research into survivors’ experiences of climate-related disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Harvey and recent California wildfires. In visualizing and making relatable the forecasts of climate scientists, Kline raises questions about whether Americans are willing and able to work together to prepare for, and possibly mitigate, what is to come.

Below are images from Kline’s short film Adaptation (2019-2022).

From the museum about the work-

The short film Adaptation (2019-22) imagines a future Manhattan transformed by climate change and follows a team of relief workers at the end of their shift. Described by the artist as a “science fiction of ordinary life,” the film focuses on what tomorrow could be like for the working people who will clean up the inevitable mess resulting from the political and economic decisions of previous generations. The fictional workers of Adaptation survive by doing the kind of essential but poorly compensated, physically taxing jobs that society takes for granted.

Using primarily analogue special effects — scale models, miniatures, and matte shots-and 16mm color film instead of high-definition digital video, Kline creates an expressionistic science fiction that suggests a nostalgia for the present from the perspective of a future transformed by global warming. Although it was filmed in 2019, the work was completed during the pandemic, and its poetic voiceover and melancholy soundtrack, both added in 2020, quietly evoke the lockdown and quarantine in New York.

This exhibition closes 1/5/25.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries