Apocalypse No!
Feeling the Heat at the 60 Wall Street
Gallery
If one were to search for images of melting
icebergs and oil-drenched beaches in “Feeling the Heat,” one would search
in vain. While the exhibition at Deutsche Bank’s 60 Wall Street Gallery in
New York investigates one of the world’s most urgent problems, climate
change, curator Liz Christensen distances herself from apocalyptic image
of horror. Instead, she banks on art that’s made well—and not just meant
well.
Brian
Ballengée, DFA 23, Kharon, 2001/2007
Courtesy
of the Artist and Archibald Arts, NYC
Prepared
scientific specimens, or merely bizarre sculptures? In the work of Brandon
Ballengée, one can never be sure. His photo works depict
skeletons of frogs—with one astonishing flaw: the frogs have six hind
legs. No, Ballengée’s photos do not feature mutations created on the
computer, but real specimens of the Pacific Tree Frog captured in
California. Due to their sensitive skin, these animals react particularly
strongly to environmental pollution and climate change, sometimes even
with physical deformities. The frog as a Litmus test testifying to the
condition of its—and our—living environment?
Brian
Ballengée, DFA 83, Karkinos, 2001/2007
Courtesy
of the Artist and Archibald Arts, NYC
For
more than a decade, Ballengée has not merely been studying the Pacific
Tree Frog, but the overall decrease in the amphibian population worldwide.
The New York-based artist operates in the interstice between art and
science—as do many of the 16 artists in Feeling the Heat, the
current show at the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank New York. The
exhibition addresses one of the most urgent problems of our time—global
climate change and its effects. Curator Liz
Christensen is not, however, concerned with painting as dark an image
as possible of the situation; she avoids approaches that are all too
didactic. Instead, the works are based, as she formulates it, on "an
overarching belief in the power of the creative process to help open our
eyes to what is happening." And this is precisely what Chris
Jordan’s works do.
Chris
Jordan, Plastic Bottles, 2007
Courtesy
of the Artist
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His series Running by Numbers: An American Self-Portrait
(2006-08) investigates the remains of the consumerist society. On each
of his large-scale photographs, he converts statistics into unbelievable
images depicting, for instance, the 160,000 soft drink cans emptied every
thirty seconds in the US, or, as in one of the works shown in Feeling
the Heat, the vast spread of the two million plastic bottles
manufactured there every five minutes. From a distance, Plastic Bottles
(2007) resembles a pointillist painting; the motif can only be
discerned up close. Jordan’s works are assembled together on the computer
from thousands of photographs; they are not merely concerned with casting
a critical eye on large-scale waste and environmental pollution, but also
explore questions of perception, the view from near and afar, singular and
plural.
Chris
Jordan, Plastic Bottles, 2007
Courtesy
of the Artist
It is one of the exhibition’s great strengths that the art
is consistently good. All too often, the artistic investigation of themes
such as global warming or environmental damage leads to an invocation of a
pristine, unspoiled nature or to images of landscapes devastated by
industrial exploitation. Exhibitions such as Feeling the Heat and Greenwashing
at the Fondazione
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, however—with artists such as Tue
Greefort, Cornelia
Parker, and Simon
Starling focusing on the theme’s social aspects—show the variety of
alternative artistic strategies employed in addressing this complex theme
at a far remove from idyllic or apocalyptic images.
Subhankar
Banerjee, Brant and Snow Geese with Chicks,
aus
der Serie "Oil and the Geese", 2006
Courtesy
of the artist and
Sundaram
Tagore Gallery, New York - Beverly Hills - Hong Kong
Another
artist exploring climate change is Olafur
Eliasson. His 42-part Glacier Series (1999), shown in the
exhibition True
North at the
Deutsche Guggenheim, depicts melting glaciers in the form of a serial
grid. Eliasson’s BMW
art car Your mobile expectations (2008), a frozen racing car
that runs on hydrogen, formulates questions on the connection between
global warming, carbon dioxide emissions, and individual mobility. On the
other hand, in his Internet platform Free
Soil, the Danish artist Nis Rømer connects artists, researchers,
and environmental activists. A close collaboration among artists and
scientists also characterizes the exhibition Weather
Report, which art critic Lucy
Lippard organized in 2007 at the Boulder
Museum of Contemporary Art and which inspired Liz Christensen to put
on Feeling the Heat. With institutions such as the National
Center for Atmospheric Research, the university city of Boulder is one
of the centers of climate research worldwide. The exhibition’s goal was to
sensitize public awareness of the subject and to develop visions of a
sustainable handling of natural resources.
Kim
Abeles, Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates, 1992
Courtesy
of the artist
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