Laylah Ali at Williams College Museum of Art Ingrid Calame at Schimidt Center Gallery, Boca Raton

Samantha Salzinger at the Bass Museum

On 14 June 2012 · In On Loan

Samantha Salzinger
Rural South Dakota, 2008
Leonids Meteor, 2008
Inkjet prints
40 x 50 inches

UNNATURAL

Bass Museum of Art
Miami Beach
September 7 – November 4, 2012

The concept of nature has acquired a new relevance in the hyper-technological age, leading many artists to reflect ironically on artificial environments, where one is unable to trust what is real and what is not. A significant number of artists today challenge the gap between traditional perceptions of “nature” and “culture.” In many cases, they introduce new understandings of the sublime that transform its romantic associations with a sense of awe.

UNNATURAL will present scientific, romantic, conceptual, poetic, sensual and ecological conceptions of nature through a variety of strategies that reflect advances in technology in the twenty-first century. The works in the exhibition question conventional means and methods of representing the natural world, and metaphorically embody both the paradoxical longing to fuse with nature and the threat embedded in such fusion. The works in UNNATURAL thus reflect a cultivated, synthetic, manipulated nature, which includes allusions to science as manifestations of a reality oscillating between the real and imaginary.