Opening reception: 3-5pm Sunday February 2nd, 2014, Exhibition continue to March 2nd, 2014
Curator: Luchia Meihua Lee
Artists: Miya ANDO, Todd GAVIN, Kay H. LIN, Pey Chwen LIN, Jeremiah TEIPEN, Sarah WALKO, XI Fei, Marlene TSENG YU, Hai ZHANG
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century…Global Mean Sea Level will continue to rise throughout the 21st century-- From Climate Change 2013: the Physical Science Basis
Raising the Temperature, a partnership exhibition with the Rainforest Art Foundation, curated by Luchia Meihua Lee, addresses contemporary artistic response to observed anthropogenic challenges to the environment. The words Raising the Temperature are a metaphor for this issue which is the urgent responsibility of us all. No one is external to the social and cultural framework in which we live. This crisis is the result of decades of commitment to the priority of material value and economic centralization, to the exclusion of artistic expression, intellectual culture change, or sustainability. However, optimism demands a reconfiguration of lifestyle in the context of contemporary plurality and a re-estimation of global core values in Eco-preference.
Raising the Temperature comprises nine artists working in various media who challenge this urgent and critical subject and hew tight to the broad eco-bio-social theme. These artists search for a new vantage on this precarious subject, and focus on the struggle to adapt in a time of societal change. The perspective is both critical and aesthetic; the "reactions" are not a manifesto, or aggressively political. Scientific alarms have been filtered through artistic sensibilities to reflect social and aesthetic considerations. The works presented here comment on our changing relationship to the world we inhabit, or discuss the conditions of our urban life and its toll on the planet.
The Curator Luchia Meihua Lee arranges the artists in the Raising the Temperature: Art in Environmental Reactions exhibition in two trajectories in order to organize our discussion and aid the appreciation of these creations. The first strand is concerned with technological changes in our society that reinforce behaviors contributing to the environmental crisis. Artists like Jeremiah Teipen, Pey Chwen Lin, Xi Fei, and Hai Zhang, are followed in transition by Todd Gavin. While expressing quite different sensibilities, Marlene Tseng Yu, Sarah Walko, Miya Ando and Kay Lin share a more romantic or intimate approach in my second strand.
Jeremiah Teipen transplants information abused in cyber space to his artwork and mimics the busy city we inhabit. Pey Chwen Lin uses the Eve Clone series to criticize the dehumanizing effects of technology. Xi Fei comments on the Darwinian nature of Manhattan life. His work indicts not technology itself but the political system that fails to evaluate its 2 consequences. Hai Zhang’s photographs of Chinese constructions sites underline the anarchic quality of this fevered building boom. Todd Gavin’s mixed-media wall-mounted piece uses coal, charcoal, and oil on cement mortar to discuss the multivalent role of Carbon. Marlene Tseng Yu reacted to melting glaciers with black and white, abstract, acrylic paintings in her series Ice Cracking, while Sarah Walko reassembles natural and manmade materials to create magical assemblages suggesting that we have behaved like commanders of the biosphere. Miya Ando’s Shimenawa Sora and Obon recall an ancient Japanese respect for nature and the ancestors, and underlines our devaluation of nature. Kay Lin’s Sun, Air, Water – Balloon refers both to restraint and to the solidarity that will lift us to a better land.
The 64-page color catalogue for this exhibition contains scholarly exposition on this theme as well as fuller information about the artists.
Raising the Temperature: Art in Environmental Reactions
Exhibition date: February 2nd, 2014 to March 2nd, 2014
Queens Museum, New York City building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY 11368
This exhibition is in partnership with Rainforest Art Foundation, 36-58 37th Street, long island City, NY 11101
Rainforest Art Foundation Exhibition date: May 1st, 2014 to May 31st, 2014
This exhibition is organized by Queens Museum, Rainforest Art Foundation, and sponsored by Ministry of Culture, R.O.C (Taiwan)
More information contact:
David Strauss: 718.592.9700 x 145, dstrauss@queensmuseum.org
Luchia Meihua Lee: 917.412.2831, raisingthetemperature@gmail.com