Neglected Corners of the World

The Earth’s landscape is constantly changing. It has not only been nature’s cyclical events that change on our planet’s terrain in the last several thousands of years, it is also mankind that devastates the land. The potential for this human destruction has grown exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. With these forces firmly in place questions beg to be asked, “Will the technological control life and permit our survival, or will nature’s self-healing abilities balance out man’s destruction?” and ultimately, “If man is to survive, will nature forgive us for these sins which we have commited against it?”

Imre Bukta’s installation works are molded from natural materials and are always site-specific. His paintings and videos made for this exhibition are in his signature agriculturally aware, or “agro-art” style. His works not only tap into the Hungarian rural perspective, but represent a unique Bukta interpretation of the world’s current events that looks beyond Hungary’s countryside.

Suzanne C. Nagy has worked on this series since 2005. First, she captures images of neglected factories, mines, electric powerhouses, and oil refineries through the art of photography. Next, with the help of a specific epoxy resin, Nagy creates a unique landscape, which she then confines in metal lightboxes. In the end, light penetrates through the epoxy to create colorful shadows over these industrial landscapes and creates a new aesthetic purpose to these devastating structures.

For the past five years Rachel Sussman has been researching, working with biologists and traveling around the world to photograph continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older. From 3,000-year-old lichens in Greenland, to 2,000-year-old conifers in Namibia, to halfmillion- year-old bacteria that lives in the Siberian permafrost, Rachel’s photographs illiuminate an intersection of art, science and philosophy.