Verity In Vision: Art At The Edge of Human Nature

Humans have learned to control their environment like no other species on the earth. We exalt ourselves for this difference, for controlling the elements and imposing constraints on natural forces.  We create protective, life-extending, buffers from the natural world: we live in homes, wear clothes, take medicine, etc.  The result is a mediated experience of nature. 

The artists in this exhibition examine how human and nonhuman nature, coexist.  In particular they look at what’s happening in the buffered interface. Because we are natural creatures our existence is inextricably tied to the health of the natural environment, but our behavior is now shaped as much by the conditions we’ve created, as the forces of nature. 

These artists practice sustained observation, and their own quasi-scientific methods of research, experimentation, and data analysis.  This often leads the artists to ritual, and a simple fixation on their subjects, which tend to be things that go unnoticed, overlooked or disregarded.  The less examined elements become objects of guilty pleasure for the artists, though their inquiry is more existential.  Have we gone too far? Not far enough? Almost certainly some of both.  The road forward requires a truth-seeking in both science and art. This exhibition is a quest for the new truths emerging in our relationship with the rest of nature. 

Image: John Schuerman, Natural Geometry