Patricia Johanson, Regional Highway Garden: Nature Walk, 1969. Courtesy of the artist
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Patricia Johanson, Bat Bridge: Crossing Route 24, 1999. Courtesy of the artist
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Sarah McCoubrey, Available, 2000. Courtesy of Locks Gallery
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Lisa Sanditz, Tower of Babble, 2009. Courtesy of CRG Gallery
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Eva Strubel, Molasses and Asphalt Tanks, 2009. Courtesy of Lombard Freid Projects
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Landscape marked by climate change - that is the theme of the current show at Deutsche Bank New York's Wall Gallery. Works by 13 artists living in New York engage with the consequences of our lifestyle for nature and the environment. Their paintings and drawings illustrate profound changes in the global landscape, but at the same time allude to ways of dealing with current ecological challenges. The exhibition was curated by Amy Lipton, director of Ecoartspace. Since 1997, the organization has initiated interdisciplinary projects on art and ecology. Beyond the Horizon picks up on Feeling the Heat, a group exhibition at Wall Gallery in 2008 that dealt with the consequences of worldwide climate change.
While the Hudson River School paintings and Ansel Adams' photographs of nature sought to capture the splendor of pristine landscapes, contemporary art's perspective of the world we live in has changed dramatically. Conscious that current ecological problems are of a global nature, the artists in the show deal with issues such as climate change, overpopulation, the loss of natural habits, and reclamation. An example is Patricia Johanson's projects, which combine Land Art with ecologically oriented landscape architecture. The artist, who was originally associated with Minimal Art, contributed playful poetic drawings to Beyond the Horizon. These works show giant sculpture-like constructs that enable migratory animal species to change their habitat without falling victim to traffic on highways. While Joy Garnett's painting from the China Yangtse Three Gorges Project (2008 - 2009) is devoted to the controversial Three Gorges Dam - a construction that has massive influences on the environment - the paintings of Aviva Rahmani refer to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The painting by Sarah Trigg, on the other hand, has a global perspective. In her series Daily Markings on the Face of the Earth (2007-2009), figurative and abstract elements mix to create an image of the world in the age of Google Earth. They convey our planet as a kind of body - an organism whose appearance is increasingly characterized by human influences.
Beyond the Horizon
June 6 - September 23, 2011
Wall Gallery, Deutsche Bank New York
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