Unsustainable

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    Someday, All This, 2021

                                              
                                                                          
  • Featuring Melanie Baker, Janet Biggs, François Bucher, peter campus, Malia Jensen, Joan Linder, and David Opdyke.

     

    Unsustainable is an online viewing room showcasing artworks that address social, political, and historical issues related to climate change. From Melanie Baker’s charcoal drawings of power plant emissions to Janet Biggs’ videos of individuals in extreme landscapes, each artist adds a distinct voice to the debate surrounding our current environmental crises. Other works included are François Bucher’s acrylic light boxes made with PET plastic and polarized film, peter campus’ dredger-filled seascapes, Malia Jensen’s naturally deteriorated salt sculptures, Joan Linder’s replicas of Amazon delivery boxes, and David Opdyke’s horrific, modified postcards. All are a response to our deteriorating natural environment, highlighting humanity’s struggle to address ecological concerns as well as our complicity in the creation of these environmental disasters.

  • Melanie Baker

    Melanie Baker

    Melanie Baker creates haunting drawings of powerful figures and the symbols that embody their authority. Included in this exhibition are several charcoal and graphite drawings addressing pollution, climate change, and the environment, longtime interests for the Brooklyn-based artist. When depicting power plant smoke emissions, Baker aims to challenge current climate policies and the people with the power to set them. After the Blast portrays figures with the power to impact the environment, older white men in pinstripe—power—suits. Bee, on the other hand, spotlights bees and their fundamental roles in our environment and ecology.
    • Melanie Baker, After the Blast, 2017
      Melanie Baker, After the Blast, 2017
    • Melanie Baker, Bee, 2020
      Melanie Baker, Bee, 2020
    • Melanie Baker, Morning Along the Ohio, 2015
      Melanie Baker, Morning Along the Ohio, 2015
  • Janet Biggs

    Janet Biggs

    Janet Biggs’ work navigates the intersection between art, science, technology, and the environment. Collaborators have included energy nuclear physicists, neuroscientists, Arctic explorers, aerospace engineers, robots, astrophysicists, dancers and musicians, among others. Her video In the Cold Edge examines an individual's search for meaning the vastness of Arctic space. The characters (one of whom is the artist) struggle to define and defend their sense of self in an extreme environment. Challenged by the elements and the unknown, Biggs’ subjects find their sense of time destabilized by the power of nature.

    • Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010
      Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010
    • Janet Biggs, A Step on the Sun, 2012
      Janet Biggs, A Step on the Sun, 2012
    • Janet Biggs, Eclipse, 2022
      Janet Biggs, Eclipse, 2022
  • François Bucher

    François Bucher

    François Bucher’s acrylic light boxes are made with PET plastic and polarized film—materials that will likely never deteriorate or decompose naturally, acting as a burden to our environment. The significance of the light phenomenon occurring within each sculpture is multi-fold. When placed between two linear polarized filters, PET plastic expresses the phenomenon of birefringence (a ray of light is refracted into two rays heading in different directions). The resulting abstract images seem to float inside the acrylic structures, or to mimic abstract gravitational waves. Polarization is also linked to Bucher’s interest in non-linear time: “PET plastic is a derivative from fossil fuels, made entirely of ancient biological life; therefore, it has a molecule akin to the one in our DNA. It is interesting to note that this phenomenon of light—anisotropy and/or polarization—is the most important tool when engaging with the exploration of deep time, including both the seconds after the Big Bang and the geological history of our own planet. Oil wells are also discovered using anisotropy.”

     
    • François Bucher, Anisotropy #006.22, 2022
      François Bucher, Anisotropy #006.22, 2022
    • François Bucher, The Moon Bends the Light, 2022
      François Bucher, The Moon Bends the Light, 2022
  • peter campus

    peter campus

    peter campus’ later work is largely devoted to the working waterways of Long Island. These videos, both alternatively abstract and realistic, are gloriously hued. Works such as providence combine the riotous colors and loosely structured forms of early fauvism with a brilliant saturation and pixelation that could only be achieved in the digital era. Other works deconstruct the observed landscape, transforming it into a rumination on the effects of light and movement across various surfaces. These videos explore communal experience and cognition, and how and when we arrive at a shared understanding of the surrounding world.

    • peter campus, dredgers, 2013
      peter campus, dredgers, 2013
    • peter campus, tubes, port de st.-nazaire, 2016
      peter campus, tubes, port de st.-nazaire, 2016
    • peter campus, murky, 2022
      peter campus, murky, 2022
  • Malia Jensen

    Malia Jensen

    Malia Jensen’s practice is informed by an interest in natural cycles and the fragility of the constructed systems we use to navigate the world. In 2019, Jensen carved six sculptures from livestock salt licks and installed them in carefully selected wild places across the state of Oregon. Throughout the year, eighteen motion-triggered cameras monitored the sculptures and the surrounding landscape, recording not only wildlife but also the dissolution of the carved salt and the changing seasons. The salt sculptures naturally deteriorate over time—a consequence of the surrounding wildlife and the corrosive effects of weather. This is documented in Jensen’s video, Worth Your Salt, a six-hour rumination on the natural world and our relationship to it.

    • Malia Jensen, Head (for Brancusi), 2020
      Malia Jensen, Head (for Brancusi), 2020
    • Malia Jensen, Hand (with Plum), 2020
      Malia Jensen, Hand (with Plum), 2020
    • Malia Jensen, Small Pile, 2010
      Malia Jensen, Small Pile, 2010
  • Joan Linder

    Joan Linder

    Joan Linder has had a lifelong obsession with the passage of time, which she channels through inordinately detailed ink drawings and sculptures. Many of Linder’s works are life-size, forming near-perfect replicas of actual objects she has encountered—Amazon boxes, Target and Trader Joe's Bags, among others. They approximate the items they represent, but close looking reveals these works are crafted. These replicas and the specifics of their mass-produced forms address consumption, consumerism and its impact on the environment.

    • Joan Linder, Is framing the bag and hanging it on the wall reusing or recycling?, 2022
      Joan Linder, Is framing the bag and hanging it on the wall reusing or recycling?, 2022
    • Joan Linder, Prime 120 Z12 (backwards), 2022
      Joan Linder, Prime 120 Z12 (backwards), 2022
  • David Opdyke

    David Opdyke

    David Opdyke makes art that explores globalization, consumerism, and civilization’s abusive relationship with the environment. His hand-modified landscape postcards offer a bracing commentary on the impact of the climate crisis on the American landscape. The works explore the themes of climate displacement and migration and bring humanity to the center. In Opdyke’s hands, these postcards are transformed from snapshots of early twentieth-century leisure into emissaries from different futures—visions of spectacular manifestations of the climate crisis.

    • David Opdyke, Hitchhiker, 2015-20
      David Opdyke, Hitchhiker, 2015-20
    • David Opdyke, Wrong Place, 2015-20
      David Opdyke, Wrong Place, 2015-20
    • David Opdyke, Prudence, 2015-20
      David Opdyke, Prudence, 2015-20
    • David Opdyke, The Matter in Question, 2015-20
      David Opdyke, The Matter in Question, 2015-20