Nancy Nesvet’s photographs and large-scale oil paintings, on view alongside sculptures by Larry Ringgold in “enDANGERd” through November 16 at Washington, D.C.’s Zenith Gallery, take entirely different turns of portraying the sea. In the paintings, the sea is vast, changing and tumultuous: in the photographs, murky depths pull me to look closely at the details. Those details are both threatening and beautiful, making the photographs look like a coming environmental apocalypse. There is a masterful handle on scale in her paintings. We know polar bears to be substantial, but in Nesvet’s eight paintings, they are microscopic, appearing in the far distance, unreachable and not treacherous at all. The bears are stranded on icebergs broken off from the mother glacier, with strong seas pushing them apart. “If but all the seas rise up,” 48” x 58”, the unending seascape shows two polar bears, … [Read more...] about NANCY NESVET AND LARRY RINGGOLD: ENDANGERD AT ZENITH GALLERY
Global Warming
TOWARD AWARENESS AND SOLUTIONS: CONSIDERING CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE — DAY THREE
It is fitting that on my last day at the Venice Biennale, as on my first, it is raining buckets, only underscoring what I perceived as the themes of the biennale: false facts and the implications of global warming on climate change. Regarding false facts, the Indigenous Peoples exhibit, “Volume 0,” establishing its place as an original document, was held at the Zuecca Project Space outside the Giardini grounds. Sponsored by the Venezia Fondamenta Sant’Anna, organized by Dr. Max Carocci, the “Indigenous Peoples” pavilion showed a video on four medicine-ball size spheres, sequentially narrating the story of Venice’s impact on 16th century North American settlements. It said that trade and the necessity of acquiring gold and gems for trade provided the impetus for invading other lands, and Venice was a crossroads of trade. The video’s narration began, “We think of these explorers, taught … [Read more...] about TOWARD AWARENESS AND SOLUTIONS: CONSIDERING CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE — DAY THREE
OLAFUR ELIASSON: NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Olafur Eliasson has a long history with MIT and many local fans have been fortunate to hear him speak, attend a lecture or meet him in person over the years. In 2014, he received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts that included a residency at the institution. At that time, he brought his “Little Suns,” a portable solar energy light source that he developed in 2012, to campus for support, development and innovation. His recent public art project, “Northwest Passage,” brings together his environmental concerns with the work he has done with his colleagues at MIT. Eliasson’s artist talk and sculpture dedication on February 26, 2019 offered up a window into his practice and way of thinking. Trained as an architect, he thinks about the big picture. For example, “Northwest Passage” refers to the sea route to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North … [Read more...] about OLAFUR ELIASSON: NORTHWEST PASSAGE