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.

Jan 032025
 

Michael Joo, “Noospheres (Composition OG:CR)”, 2024

Cannupa Hanska Luger, “Sovereign”, 2024

Yoshitomo Nara, “A Sinking Island Floating in a Sea Called Space 1 and 2”, 2024

For the group exhibition Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, Hammer Museum has gathered artists from around the world to present work that addresses environmental and social issues. The exhibition is part of the PST ART: Art and Science Collide programming taking place throughout Southern California.

From the museum about the exhibition-

The confluence of cataclysmic events that marked the year 2020-among them the global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, and the murder of George Floyd, which gave powerful momentum to Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements-created a rupture. For many, it felt like the end of the world that they had known. Under circumstances of physical and psychological lockdown, the very notion of taking a single breath-an act vital to multispecies existence since time immemorial-took on renewed significance. Breathing as an act of resistance and survival in the face of racial inequity and a global health crisis calls attention to the inextricable link between social and environmental injustice. The often imperceptible but ever growing burden of climate-related tragedies-the thawing cryosphere, extreme heat, flooding, deforestation, radioactive aftermaths of wars, and ocean acidification-has played a direct role in the deterioration of economic conditions and the displacement of populations.

Breath(e) assembles artists from around the world who share concerns about threats to their communities and environments. The exhibition foregrounds an ethical stance that critiques the privileging of the human being as the most significant among all entities and instead values interdependence. Some of the works reassess philosophical assumptions regarding what constitutes the “human,” while others question who speaks on behalf of the rights of nature and how we adjudicate the agency of the earth, trees, air, and oceans. The exhibition also highlights artistic practices that have transformed the cultural tropes of the climate crisis into narratives of resilience, transformation, renewal, and coexistence. These narratives are explored through various means: restoring balance and belonging to the land through speculative models for future survival; exploring the regenerative capacities of waste through structural transformations in life cycles; making visible the impact of anthropogenic violence on our bodies over time; the passing down of living knowledge that promotes biodiversity through multiple generations; giving voice to youth and empowering them with food sovereignty; and the radical presence of multispecies survival amid capitalist exploitation. Each of these strategies points to systemic shifts, reminding us of the power of each breath and of how the ethical principles of justice can be advanced amid life as well as on the path to extinction.

Below are a few selections and some additional information from the museum.

Xin Liu, “The Mothership”

About the work above-

Identifying as both a scientist and an artist, Xin Liu uses the language of technological development to explore our desire to preserve and artificially extend biological life. In 2023, inspired by scientific innovations in cryonics and egg freezing, Liu developed Cry:0, a series of mixed-media sculptures that includes The Mothership, a science fiction-like panel equipped with a cooling mechanism that pulls water directly from the air, causing thin layers of frost to gradually develop on the surface of the central bronze mouth, which the artist cast from her own body. With its spectral, biomorphic form and evocative title, The Mothership reflects on technologies designed to manipulate time as well as the central role played by the female body in perpetuating the human species.

Installations by Korean art collective ikkibawiKrrr and Garnett Puett (structure in the back on the right)

About the ikkibawiKrrr multimedia installation and video-

The Korean collective ikkibawiKrr’s expanded approach to art making encompasses performance, workshops, and events. The neologism ikkibawiKrrr consists of the Korean words ikki, meaning “moss”; bawl, meaning “rock”; and krrr, an onomato poetic word that implies a rolling motion. Through its work the group aspires to be “moss-like,” an organism constantly adapting in response to its surroundings. It has focused its recent work on the culture and ecology of the tropical Jeju Island, located off the southern coast of Korea.

A popular tourist destination known for its pristine ecosystem, Jeju Island is home to a community of haenyeo (female divers, or “women of the sea’), who are venerated for their ability to hold their breath for long periods of time while underwater. Upon rising to the surface, the haenyeo make a distinctive whistling sound as they rapidly exhale carbon dioxide and inhale fresh oxygen, a breathing technique called sumbisori, or “breath sound.” A matriarchal community committed to environmentalism, the haenyeo have been sustainably harvesting seafood for centuries. Given their symbiotic relationship with nature, their already arduous work has been greatly impacted by climate change, particularly rising water temperatures, which have harmed algae and changed the migratory patterns of predatory fish. Additionally, Jeju Island is not as clean as it once was, and the haenyeo now risk being trapped by discarded fishing nets and spend their time collecting plastics from the ocean.

In the video that forms part of ikkibawiKrr’s multimedia installation Seaweed Story (2022), a haenyeo choir stands on the cliffs of Hado, a fishing village on Jeju Island, singing a regional variation on “Arrang,” an ancient folk song with strong ties to Korean nationalism. During Japan’s imperialist era (1910-45), the fishing industry exploited the haenyeo and overfished their waters, leading the women to organize local cooperatives and public demonstrations, many of which took place in Hado. Through their performance, the haenyeo reinforce their connection to both the ocean and historical resistance movements. The installation also includes a sandbox containing miniature replicas of the small houses where these women convene, rest, and change in and out of their wetsuits.

Below is Garnett Puett’s sculpture, located inside the enclosed structure pictured above, where bees help create the work.

From the museum-

A sculptor and fourth-generation beekeeper based in Hawaii, Garnett Puett collaborates with bees to create what he terms “apisculptures” (api is the Latin word for “bee”). Combining ancestral knowledge with his passion for art, Puett conceived of this signature method in 1983, when he was a graduate student at Pratt Institute in New York City. As demonstrated by the newly commissioned work on view, Puett emphasizes the creative process over any particular outcome. To initiate Untitled (Paradoxical Garden Downstream) (2024), he conceived a figurative armature for the sculpture, coated it in thick layers of beeswax using a rotating table of his own design, and enclosed it in a habitat for bees. He then introduced a locally sourced queen along with her hive, thousands of worker bees (female honeybees), who made the work their home. Over the course of its brief lifespan, approximately six weeks, the colony will gather nectar and pollen to sustain the queen while elaborating the structure with honeycomb. Working symbiotically, Puett and the bees will eventually arrive at a final apisculpture. Three previously realized works are on view in the same gallery.

Garnett Puett, “Untitled (Paradoxical Garden Downstream)”,2024

Roxy Paine, “Chart”, 2024

Roxy Paine, “Chart”, 2024 (detail)

From the museum about Roxy Paine and the work above-

Since the 1990s, Roxy Paine has made thousands of scientifically accurate reproductions of mushrooms, underscoring the important role played by fungi in balancing our ecosystems. As agents of decomposition, fungi drive the global carbon cycle-the process by which carbon moves between the soil, living organisms, and the atmosphere. Belonging to a category of artworks that Paine calls “replicants,” his synthetic fungi colonies convincing y mimic the ways organic mushrooms spread in concentrated areas, sprouting directly from the floor or from wall-hung supports. Paine has researched and replicated the three major types of mushrooms: parasitic fungi, which attack living matter, thus regulating the populations of their hosts; saprophytic fungi, which consume and recycle dead matter; and symbiotic or mycorrhizal fungi, which flourish synergistically with the roots of plants and trees, supporting forests as they absorb carbon. Also known as “climate change warriors,” mycorrhizal fungi have the capacity to delay the effects of global warming, but rising temperatures could be putting them at risk of decline.

Chart (2024), a multivariant field, presents lesser-known examples of parasitic, saprophytic, and symbiotic fungi, including Geastrum striatum, or earthstars; the coral-like Clathrus ruber, or cage fungus, a type of stinkhorn that attracts insects by smelling of rotten meat; the scaly, globular Scleroderma citrinum, or pigskin poison puffball; Sarcoscypha coccinea, or scarlet cup, composed of small, open ellipsoids, reminiscent of bodily orifices, that gather in moist moss or on the forest floor; and Lycogola epidendrum, creamsicle-colored pustules that, when naturally occurring, ooze pink slime when pressed. Paine also simulates the neon-bright nets of plasmodium slime mold, a saprophytic organism resembling fungi that consumes mushrooms, bacteria, and other rotting matter. While these species would not be found cohabitating in the wild, they unite in their effort to erode a Turkish rug patterned with abstract representations of flora and fauna. This syncretic rug, a product of merging cultures, stands in for the invisible, carpet-like mycelium, the network of threads that form the rootlike structure of a fungus.

Paintings from Mel Chin’s series of paintings for “Interpretation of Vision (or IOV, pronounced “eye of”)”

About Mel Chin’s work from the museum-

Commissioned for this exhibition, Interpretation of Vision (or IOV, pronounced “eye of”) consists of thirty-two paintings realized through personal connections with individuals whose lives were altered by phenomenological experiences. Chin believes that the first step in the collective undertaking to fight persistent social and climate injustice is to dismantle division and promote empathy toward others. Opposed to proselytizing, he feels obligated to take the first step.

Like the artist Frida Kahlo, Chin drew inspiration from retablos and ex votos, small-scale devotional paintings, typically on wood or metal, that serve as votive offerings. During the nineteenth century any life-changing event could warrant the making of an ex-voto as an offering of gratitude. Typically produced by anonymous artisans on behalf of a patron, these paintings represent the tragic circumstances, such as accidents and near-fatal Illnesses, that precipitated their commission, showing saints or martyrs intervening to save the life of the afflicted. IOV is a multistage commission that began with a public call for stories from people whose lives were altered by natural, spiritual, or supernatural phenomena. Inspired by the unnamed ex-voto artisans, Chin collaborated with each respondent to honor and elevate their stories. Each dialogue resulted in a diptych, a two-part painting, presented on an artist-designed, seismically sensitive plinth. In each work the rendering of reality is embedded into an aperture on the right, while its corollary, the depiction of the transformational experience, is mounted on the surface. The wall fluidly accommodates any shifts between perception and knowing.

Ron Finley created the large scale garden installation, Grounded for the exhibition, pictured below. Also included in his section of the exhibition are several of the shovels created by his artist friends for Urban Weaponry Project, Weapons of Mass Creation, located in a separate room.

From the museum-

Finley, also known as the Gangsta Gardener, empowers people to grow their own food and advocates for communities to have access to fresh, nutrient-dense, organically grown food. Through the Ron Finley Project, he has cultivated gardens in urban food deserts, places where access to healthy food and fresh produce is limited or nonexistent. In 2009 he began planting vegetables, fruit trees, and other greenery along parkways, the stretches of land between the sidewalk and the street, in South Central Los Angeles. “I wanted butterflies and hummingbirds. I wanted something pretty, like amaryllis and agapanthus, and I wanted it to smell like jasmine, juniper, mint, and orange blossoms,” he recalls. “So that’s what I did.” After receiving a citation from the city for gardening without a permit, he fought back, and the City of Los Angeles changed its ordinance regulating gardening on public land.

With the commissioned work Grounded, Finley brings his urban gardening practice to the Hammer, creating a green, nourishing respite on the museum’s terrace in emulation of his own extraordinary garden. Both sites include vegetables and fruit trees growing alongside artworks and repurposed objects and contain communal spaces intended to rejuvenate audiences while fostering dialogues about food access, empowerment, and freedom. Inside, Finley presents selected works from his ongoing Urban Weaponry Project, Weapons of Mass Creation (2018-), a project that underscores his deep-rooted devotion to art, design, gardening, and grassroots organizing. Seven years ago he noticed that many of his artist friends were working in isolation. In an effort to connect them, he began inviting each one to transform a common, mass-produced gardening shovel into a distinctive work of art. A testament to Finley’s strength in community building, the present installation represents only a small fraction of his expansive collection. “A tool of mass creation,” as he frequently calls it, the shovel becomes a twin symbol of artistic production and food cultivation.

Lan Tuazon also created a large installation outside of the main galleries (pictured below).

From the museum-

Part of a generation of artists invested in criticizing institutionalized systems, Lan Tuazon proposes methods for recirculating organic and human-made materials to sustainably extend the lifespan of our things. In a linear economy, most consumer products begin as natural resources extracted from the landscape only to conclude as waste in a landfill. Commissioned for this exhibition, Over Your Head & Under the Weather (2024) stages a circular economy by demonstrating techniques of material recovery. Single-use plastics have been industrially shredded and pressed into panels, surplus newspapers are densified into newspaper wood, and other organic materials like coconut fibers are reconfigured into papercrete. Tuazon also makes use of innovative industrial products. The entire structure is constructed from multifunctional WaterBricks, interlocking, modular storage containers originally designed to preserve food and water for emergency and disaster relief purposes, and the floor is lined with Biomason’s carbon-reducing/sequestering Biolith tiles, made with recycled aggregates and bacterium-cultivated cement.

Designed to resemble a functionalized minimal sculpture, Over Your Head & Under the Weather wraps around the building to form two primary architectural bays. One side houses an industrial shredder and a plastic-collection station. Visitors are invited to contribute to the work’s circular economy by donating their #2 and #5 plastics, which will later be processed and shredded. The windows on the other side of the structure contain sculptural reliefs from Tuazon’s Assorted Drive series. Drawing on the language of data storage, the Assorted Drives ironically preserve physical evidence of human production and consumption: found materials, plastic beverage rings, bread ties, caps, and confetti made from previously shredded plastics. Part of an ongoing series, the towering sculpture Future Fossil-made from mass-produced containers, cut and nested like Russian dolls-uses the metaphor of geological petrification to allude to the tremendous scale and indeterminate lifespan of consumer and industrial waste.

Tiffany Chung’s stored in a jar: moonsoon, drowning fish, color of water, and the floating world, 2010-11, pictured below, references Vietnam and its vulnerability to flooding and the rising sea level.

Through meticulous archival and mapping practices, Tiffany Chung commemorates the experiences of local communities facing sociopolitical and climate-related trauma, placing those experiences within a global context. Born in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Chung was forced to relocate following the fall of Saigon in 1975 to one of the government’s New Economic Zones (NEZ) as part of a population redistribution program aimed at restructuring Vietnam’s economy and southern society. Chung moved with her family to the Mekong Delta, the southwestern region of Vietnam where the Mekong River meets the South China Sea. In 1978 she witnessed a historic riverine flood in the area that killed seventy-four, left seventy-nine thousand homeless, and impacted more than four hundred thousand people. Eventually Chung migrated to the United States, taking part in the massive exodus of refugees precipitated by the NEZ program. Today Vietnam is among the countries that are most vulnerable to sea-level rise. According to recent projections, by the year 2050 almost all the land in southern Vietnam could be engulfed, displacing twenty million people, or nearly one quarter of the country’s population.

In several works, Chung explores extreme flooding — a natural phenomenon that in Vietnam is exacerbated both by the construction of hydroelectric dams in the Mekong River Basin and by human-driven climate change-and proposes solutions. In 2010 she constructed stored in a jar: monsoon, drowning fish, color water, and the floating world, a large-scale model for a floating village. To create this utopian world, Chung drew a formal language from vernacular architecture throughout Asia and structured a city in emulation of actual floating communities: vessels and houseboats tethered together in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam; floating communities on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia; a makeshift system of interconnected house-rafts on the Song Kalia River in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand; and camps of floating palaces on a network of rivers in Srinagar, India.

Tiffany Chung, “stored in a jar: moonsoon, drowning fish, color of water, and the floating world”, 2010-11

Sarah Rosalena, “Exit Point”, 2019

About Sarah Rosalena’s work pictured above-

To make Exit Point, Rosalena trained a neural network to combine the Blue Marble photo and the M87 black hole image and output the results to a mechanical loom, which materialized each pixel as a thread in a Jacquard textile. As the Jacquard loom is considered a predecessor to the modern computer, her textiles also challenge linear accounts of technological progress. Through the use of artificial intelligence, Rosalena creates coiling, looping, and spiraling temporalities that function as tools for examining our past and present.

About Bently Spang‘s War Shirt #6- Waterways, pictured above-

The Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang creates multidisciplinary artworks inspired by the utilitarian and artistic practices of his ancestors, the Tsitsistas/Suhtaio people. One of Spang’s first such projects was War Shirt #1 (1998), which he made by stitching together family photographs and film negatives, using the negatives as fringe. Spang notes that ancestral war shirts are “reciprocal garments” created by the community to shelter warriors as they battle to protect that community. In 2017 Mountain Time Arts in Bozeman, Montana, commissioned Spang to create a work that would explore the influence of climate change on water resources and raise awareness of the issue in the region. The result was War Shirt #6-Waterways (2017), a multimedia sculptural installation that takes the form of a Plains-style war shirt.

The body of War Shirt #6-Waterways is made up of twenty-one monitors and fringed with six digital still photographs. With the help of a local support team, Spang welded the steel armature and programmed the monitors to present a synchronous, multichannel video, which he filmed while walking from the Tongue River, a tributary of the Yellowstone River that traverses Montana and Wyoming, to a local spring on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation; the digital fringe presents images from a preserved plant press book collected by a tribal historian and ethnobotanist. “I’m telling the viewer to know your water, know where it comes from and how it gets to you, and then you can protect it,” says Spang. “We should all have a relationship with that water, with these places that the water manifests.”

Sandy Rodriguez, “YOU ARE HERE/ Tovaangar / El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula / Los Angeles”(2021)

About the Sandy Rodriguez work above-

Made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the multilingual map of the greater Los Angeles area YOU ARE HERE / Tovaangar / El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula / Los Angeles (2021) draws inspiration from the region’s history. It includes depictions of the trial of Toypurina, an Indigenous woman who led a rebellion against the Mission San Gabriel in 1785, as well as sixteenth-century primary source materials, including the Florentine Codex (ca. 1529-69), an encyclopedic ethnographic study of central Mexico. YOU ARE HERE includes images of plants and animals used by Native peoples, which represent geographic locations and serve as indicators of the cardinal directions. Place-names are hand painted in English, Spanish, and Tongva to reference renaming in the region over time as a colonial act of aggression. Rodriguez wants visitors to encounter this painting as they might a way-finding map and to use it to reorient themselves in space and time. She studies, documents, and processes native botanical specimens that have healing properties to create pigments, inks, and watercolors, applying these handmade materials to amate paper made from the bark of trees in Puebla, Mexico. A symbol of Indigenous culture, this sacred pre-Columbian material was prohibited by the Spanish during the colonial period.

Pictured below is one of Yangkura’s “waste monsters”, Tongsinsa, and his film depicting the monster in public (him in the costume).

From the museum-

Working on the west coast of South Korea, Yangkura is a performance and installation artist who uses ordinary trash to represent the dynamics of foreign relations in northeast Asia. Provoked by the 2007 MT Hebei Spirit Oil Spill (HSOS), in which 10,900 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea and contaminated the Korean coastline, Yangkura has focused his practice on the effects of anthropogenic marine pollution. In 2013 he began collecting and categorizing the waste from North Korea, China, and Japan that washed ashore on the coast of South Korea. By tracing tidal movements, he established the migratory pattens for marine debris moving among these countries, discovering that Korea’s trash frequently makes its way to Tsushima Island in Japan. He suspects that this island’s unique geographic formation makes it behave like a vacuum for international garbage, allowing the waters east of Korea to stay relatively clean. As Yangkura’s research suggests, the litter collecting in our oceans does not recognize geopolitical boundaries.

In 2015 Yangkura began constructing “waste monsters” —whimsical, colossal trash costumes, each with its own fictive identity. Yangkura wears these costumes while stilt-walking in performances intended to draw public awareness to the grotesqueness of our collective marine pollution problem. While he recognizes other environmental activists attempting to shock the public into change, he does not believe this approach is sustainable. Instead, he prefers to broach the topic of anthropogenic pollution through storytelling, weaving fantastic, subliminal narratives to engage and educate. In 2017 Yangkura began working with Tsushima CAPPA, a Japanese environmental organization focused on promoting awareness of marine pollution and on cleaning Tsushima Island. He used this collaboration to create a new “monster,” a character he hoped would deftly underscore selfishness as a fundamental human problem. Forgotten Tongsinsa or Forgotten Messenger (2017-) is constructed from trash originating in Korea, China, and Japan recovered from the coast of Tsushima Island (the word tongsinsa refers to a messenger with a diplomatic purpose, and it was originally applied to envoys sent to Japan on goodwill missions during the Joseon era). Yangkura describes Forgotten Tongsinsa as a good monster who dearly misses home and is simply trying to find his way back again.

This exhibition closes 1/5/25.

May 242024
 

“After Storm in the Fen”, 2024, Oil on canvas

“Squall Lines”, 2024, Oil on canvas

For Rachel MacFarlane’s exhibition, Coming Events Cast Their Light Before Them, at Hollis Taggart, she has painted several dreamlike landscapes based on her travels to places impacted by climate events. She first creates maquettes from her observations (three are on view) and then uses them as the basis for the paintings.

From the press release-

At its core, MacFarlane’s work is about lamenting the loss of specific landscapes through creating and depicting new worlds where humans are no longer the protagonists. MacFarlane spends much of her time immersed in unique geographical environments – often ones that have been heavily impacted by climate change-related weather events. While working on her newest body of work, MacFarlane spent extensive time in places ranging from the Adirondacks to Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park in Maine, and from Prince Edward Island right after it had been hit by Hurricane Fiona to Clearwater, Manitoba during unprecedented flooding. As has always been her practice, MacFarlane does not document while she travels, instead preferring to absorb the atmosphere of a place and spend time really immersed in its sights and sounds. Upon returning to her studio, MacFarlane transforms her observations into three-dimensional maquettes created out of paper, paint, and plastic.

As MacFarlane describes it, a lot of play takes place at her collage table, as she manufactures new spaces based loosely on the spirit of specific ones, drawing on a myriad of influences from theatre and architecture to the world-building of science fiction literature and movies. The paintings in this show were specifically influenced by MacFarlane’s research into the Augsburg Book of Miracles, a manuscript depicting celestial and weather phenomena made in Augsburg, Germany in the sixteenth century. MacFarlane was moved and inspired by how these anonymous illustrators centuries before her were also dedicated to tracking warning signs in the landscape and to recording them in creative ways.

While she describes the model-building as a distancing method, it is also one that creates intimacy, as the scale shift to a shallow box model leads to the creation of a miniature world we can literally hold in our hands versus the enormity of the environment. After MacFarlane distills the memory of a place into an object, she further transforms it into its final form on the canvas, using bold colors and thick brushwork that highlights the painterliness and artifice of her landscapes. As art critic Barry Schwabsky notes in the catalogue essay, these multiple translations and transformations allow MacFarlane to “operate with and against flatness and depth, illusion and physicality, naturalness and theatricality… Her work gives pleasure but also warns that with all these unavoidable antitheses, the choice of one pole or the other would be hopeless, and we have to learn to live with the tensions between them.”

This exhibition closes 5/25/24.

Nov 152023
 

The images above are from SUPERFLEX: This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg, GENERATOR: USF Contemporary Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition. The two part exhibition includes a sculptural installation and the mesmerizing interactive animation Vertical Migration, in which viewers encounter a siphonophore that reacts to their movements.

From the gallery about the exhibition-

This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg emerges from SUPERFLEX’s in-depth research into the deep sea, biodiversity, and the climate. The exhibition immerses viewers in two parallel and interconnected realms, separated by a curtain which acts as an imaginary filter between land and sea. Passing through the curtain brings visitors from a terrestrial space unsettled by rising water to the ocean’s dark depths, to meet one of the most important cleaners of the ocean, the siphonophore. Relatives of the jellyfish, siphonophores bring between two and six billion tons of carbon a year from the surface down to the seabed, where it is stored. This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg offers an opportunity to encounter this unfamiliar species, prompting reflection on the impacts and consequences of climate change, especially relevant to Florida and its coastal communities, and encouraging humans to imagine a future defined by interspecies living and ecological coexistence.

For a more detailed discussion of the work, the gallery has created an exhibition catalogue that can be viewed online or downloaded as a pdf.

Vertical Migration was originally created in 2021 by SUPERFLEX for ART 2030  and was projected on the United Nations Secretariat Building in NYC during the 76th United Nations General Assembly.

SUPERFLEX’s statement on the project-

The sea is not an abyss. It teems with an almost unimaginable array of life. Every night, the largest biological migration on Earth takes place, as trillions of creatures travel closer to the surface to feed. Some of these animals, like shrimp, are well-known. Others, like siphonophores—relatives of jellyfish—are unfamiliar: varying wildly in size, from the slightness of a fingernail to the length of a whale, they look like nothing that we find on land.

How does it feel to be one of these creatures? To explore this question, SUPERFLEX designed a computer-generated siphonophore and created an animated film, Vertical Migration, depicting its ascent. At first, the film mechanically circles the creature, getting closer and closer while giving the audience a view of it from all angles. But eventually the perspective shifts, the camera’s movements become more fluid, and the viewer sees the world from the perspective of the siphonophore.

Unsettling our perceptions of scale and otherness, Vertical Migration is an intimate encounter with a life form that bears no resemblance to human beings, though we share a planet, an ecosystem, and a future. Because of sea-level rise, humans will also be migrating vertically in the coming centuries, to higher elevations and raised buildings. The siphonophore’s story is our story. Though we can never experience its journey through the pitch-black ocean depths, we can shift our perspective to recognize that we’re connected, that our actions affect each other, and that we share a common fate.

For a look at the work in motion, below is the trailer from ART 2030.

About SUPERFLEX from their website-

SUPERFLEX was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, and Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen. Conceived as an expanded collective, SUPERFLEX has consistently worked with a wide variety of collaborators, from gardeners to engineers to audience members. Engaging with alternative models for the creation of social and economic organisation, works have taken the form of energy systems, beverages, sculptures, copies, hypnosis sessions, infrastructure, paintings, plant nurseries, contracts, and public spaces.

Working in and outside the physical location of the exhibition space, SUPERFLEX has been engaged in major public space projects since their award-winning Superkilen opened in 2011. These projects often involve participation, involving the input of local communities, specialists, and children. Taking the idea of collaboration even further, recent works have involved soliciting the participation of other species. SUPERFLEX has been developing a new kind of urbanism that includes the perspectives of plants and animals, aiming to move society towards interspecies living. For SUPERFLEX, the best idea might come from a fish.

This exhibition closes 11/22/23.

Oct 252023
 

Anthony Freese “State of Emergency”, 2023 vinyl and “Termination”, 2023 3D print

(L to R) Jay Giroux “Slow Burn”, 2023, waterborne acrylic on aluminum sign panel mounted to MDF; Ryan Lagasse, “This Isn’t Sunshine”, 2023, acrylic on wood; Blake Bailey, “Solar Pressure”, 2023, linocut relief print

Ryan Lagasse “This Isn’t Sunshine”, 2023, acrylic on wood

Jay Giroux, “Drug Store”, 2023, acrylic on primed MDF

RJ Martin, “Cold projections”, 2023, digital print on signboard and “Truth in blue”, 2023, 3D print

(left) Edgar Sanchez Cumbas, “Where There Is Brown There Is Gold”, 2023, digital print embellished with wax, acrylic, and charcoal on Arches cold press 140lb paper; (right) Joana Hila “Equilibrium of Insect & Flora”, 2023, mixed media

The works above are from Department of Contemporary Art’s latest group exhibition Degrees, organized with Tampa’s Greater Public Studio. It explores the multiple uses of the word “degrees” including in climate change, education and history.

Artists included in the exhibition- Blake Bailey, Anthony Freese, Jay Giroux, Joana Hila, Ryan Lagasse, Richard Martin, Julia Parrino, Alex Roberts, and Edgar Sanchez Cumbas.

About Degrees from the gallery’s website-

In this exhibition, we unravel the layers of meaning behind ‘Degrees’. From the nuanced shades of truth that shape our perceptions to the tangible degrees of temperature that influence our environment, the exhibition creates a dynamic dialogue between different dimensions of this concept.

Situated in a pivotal battleground state, the exhibition also contemplates the intricate relationship between degrees and the pressing issue of global warming. Delving into the political discourse, we examine how degrees of belief and denial intersect, particularly in the context of climate change debates.

Furthermore, the exhibition prompts contemplation on the notion of an art degree. What does it signify? How does it define one’s creative journey? These questions guide us through an exploration of artistic qualifications and the degrees of expertise they represent.

A journey through art history reveals the connection between degrees and lines, as we delve into the associations between angles, perspectives, and the progression of artistic movements. This collection invites you to ponder how degrees of inclination can shape artistic expression and historical narratives.

Join us in this immersive exhibition, where degrees of interpretation converge, offering a multi-dimensional encounter with the concept of ‘Degrees’.

Tomorrow (10/26/23) from 6-9pm is the last chance to see the show.

Sep 012022
 

Rise Above by Alex Yanes was created for the 2020 iteration of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.

Information on this mural from the St. Pete Arts Alliance website-

Set between two large windows, the mural is 19 feet wide and 15 feet high. Sort of. Because the mural isn’t the usual rectangle – it’s shaped like an abstracted fish that’s swimming to the left, with angular fins jutting out, curling waves that break around it and a curling tail that’s fanned up like a whale.

Rise Above is a vibrant splash of shades of blues, pinks and orange, made up of 18 connected panels. The fish’s orange head points to the left, with sharply angled fins and a wide open mouth, both in shades of light and darker pink. The fish has aqua lips, an aqua throat, and a big dark eye outlined in aqua, painted as if light is glinting off it.

In the upper left, above the fish’s mouth, a blue and white wave rolls to the left.

The fish’s body stretches toward the right, starting with a square that bears a striking cartoon face and wide blue eyes staring straight out, masked by blue waves. Above the eyes is a black triangle with the word “RISE” in blue curved capital letters, shadowed in pink. The R, I and E are rising up and to the right, and the S falls below, to take up the rest of the triangle.

Balanced on the rising edge of that triangle are two dorsal fins along the fish’s back, shaped like pyramids in shades of red and orange and angled up and to the right.

Beside the word “RISE” and the orange pyramids, a big blue wave rolls to the right. Just below is more of the fish’s body – a long panel with the word “ABOVE” in wavy orange letters, like it’s underwater. Partly covering the “A” in “ABOVE,” a peachy cartoon hand faces out, gesturing “stop.” The hand stands out, in the center, as if the fish is balanced on it. The bottom of the hand’s palm is scalloped, like waves.

Below and to the right of the hand, triangular fins in shades of blue angle point and to the right. They echo the shapes of the pink fins below the fish’s mouth and the orange fins along its back.

The wave continues to the right, swooping up with an overlay of black and white patterns like scales, up to the jaunty two-pronged tail, in shades of orange. An active and hungry fish, rolling waves, a human, and the words “rise above” all appear together like a fragmented mirror, in roughly the shape of a fish.

The artist explains: “Intended to highlight how climate change is accelerating sea level rise, I was inspired to create a multi-level installation consisting of 18, precisely hand cut, panel pieces which create the image of a displaced fish when combined.

“The hand-painted panels are meant to mimic an intricate jigsaw puzzle, representing the complicated interconnection of factors which comprise the cause and effects of sea level rise.

“By collectively doing our part to cut out fossil fuels and limit carbon emissions, we can ‘Rise Above’ and reduce the impact of this inevitable threat.”

For more work by Alex Yanes- also check out his Instagram.

 

Aug 262022
 

There/Here: A Cry For Help, 2008/2011/2020

Three Carbon Catchers, 2021

The two works above are from Balance of Water, an exhibition of collaborative work by Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse,  at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Information from the museum about the first image-

There/Here: A Cry For Help, 2008/2011/2020, is a map of the Gulf of Mexico with an overlay of a map of all the world’s water currents. It is meant to indicate that the world waters, as the world itself, is all connected. The Tarpon, representing all life in our waters, is encountering the effects of global warming.

For the second image-

Three Carbon Catchers, 2021- The Mangrove is a major absorber of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, if left in the atmosphere or in our waters is one of the main contributors to global warming. This painting honors the mangrove.

Mangroves thrive in saltwater environments where most plants cannot. They protect our shorelines from erosion and flooding. Worldwide, mangroves absorb about 24 million metric tons of carbon in the soil each year.

From LRMA’s website about the exhibition-

Balance of Water highlights contemporary artists Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse whose collaborative work raises awareness of the effects of climate change on our waterways. As this delicate ecosystem nears a tipping point, they explore ways to alleviate the warming of our waters and reveal the consequences of the rapidly changing climate with a sense of mindfulness and urgency. Since relocating from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs in 2017, Mickett and Stackhouse unveil their work to their recently adopted community in north Pinellas County for the first time with a series of monumental paintings that tell the overarching story of the effects of global warming.

This exhibition closes on 8/28/22.