Curated by Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda, the Taipei Biennial 2018 officially announces its title: Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem. Taking this title as their starting point, the curators will approach the ever-changing nature of an ecosystem and how this is reflected in artistic and institutional practice. This exhibition will investigate how systemic theory can inform art making and allow for reflections about our environment, underlining the reciprocal dependency which every system relies upon to survive.

“Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem combines the notion of ecosystemic survival and the structure of interdependency in its very form. Here, the museum and the city that surrounds it are recognised as interlocking structures. The exhibition will explore, illustrate and investigate the different modes of connectivity and reciprocal dependency that keep a system alive. In this biennial, all artistic, theoretical, social and political elements will contribute to an overarching view of how an ecosystem is generated, and how it regenerates, through collaboration among parts and adaptation to change.”

For more information visit the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Biennial Foundation. 

Sussman is exhibiting "(Selected) History of the Spacetime Continuum as well as photographic prints from the Oldest Living Things in the World.  

From a prototype domestic wallpaper which is designed to reveal itself in response to internal air pollution, to a large sculptural ‘lung’ made from a pioneering organic building material, Future Knowledge is a thought-provoking new exhibition that will explore the role of visual culture in raising awareness about climate change.

Building upon the ambition of last year’s inaugural edition of Future Knowledge (20 May – 25 June 2017), over five weeks Modern Art Oxford will be transformed into a public studio – a space where questions are asked, ideas are shared, and future possibilities imagined. Bringing together artworks, prototypes and projects by artists, designers and thinkers from a wide range of different disciplines, this unique exhibition will showcase a fascinating and diverse range of creative responses to environmental concerns. In particular, it will ask: how can artistic inquiry and creative ecological design generate new perspectives on climate change?

Climate change has already had a measurable impact on the environment, which scientists agree has most likely been caused by human activity since the mid-twentieth century. There has been a significant global temperature increase in recent years, causing warming oceans, melting ice sheets and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Future Knowledge will acknowledge these facts and help raise further awareness of environmental concerns, but it will also celebrate the possibility that creativity and ingenuity in current and future generations can bring about a positive change.

Future Knowledge is part of the nationwide project, Season for Change, which invites artists and arts organisations from across the country to explore climate change through creative presentation.

Alchemy brings together a group of international artists whose work incorporates gold (or another metal disguised as gold). In each case, this precious material not only brings a sense of luxury to the work, but also ushers in connotations of the historic and cultural value various societies have placed on this rare element. As glamorous and sought after as gold may be, it’s capable of suggesting complicated politics and potent symbolism. The works in Alchemy embrace both dark and light readings of this glittering metal.

Artists for Alchemy are an international group at the forefront of contemporary practice. Teresa Margolles, whose gilded fragment of a building destroyed in a catastrophic earthquake comments on commemoration and monuments of grief. Zarina constructs minimalist shapes in gold leaf, referencing architecture and contemplative spirituality. Danh Vo gilds cardboard refuse, reimagining a simple box as wall sculpture, with marks of use as well as golden reminders of Mexican history. Luis Gispert combines gold chains and glittering stone into sparkling abstractions, referencing the decadence of rock n roll culture as well as post-war abstract painting. Lalla Essaydi uses glittering bullet casings to create garments and backdrops that refer to Islamic visual culture, which she then works into large-scale staged photographs. Rachel Sussman will create a site-specific work for the AAM’s presentation of Alchemy, filling a crack in the floor with gold and resin in homage to the Japanese tradition of “Kintsukuroi,” in which ceramics are repaired with gold. Related photographs by Sussman will also be in the exhibition.

The full list of artists participating is as follows: James Lee Byars, Los Carpinteros, Dorothy Cross, Olga de Amaral, Lalla Essaydi, Don and Era Farnsworth, Luis Gispert, Laurent Grasso, Charles Lindsay, Teresa Margolles, Rachel Sussman, Hank Willis Thomas, Danh Vo, Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, Zarina

Alchemy is organized by Curator Laura Burkhalter.

FUTURE ISMS: an exhibition at Glass Box Gallery in Seattle.  

Glassbox Gallery is proud to present Future Isms, an exhibition of photography and video work curated by Jon Feinstein. Art, literature, and pop culture have a legacy of positing sci-fi fantasies of the world to come, which often contain parallels to the uncertainties of the current social and political climate. This exhibition approaches these present day premonitions with a similarly precarious gaze. Some artists offer optimistic, utopian angles, others look at the present-future with a dystopian pessimism, and many offer a blurry hybrid. With work that ranges from eerily lit portraits to animated gifs and analog collage, the exhibition hinges on its curatorial ambiguity. 

See Rachel's work: "Opportunity Rover Tracks #1113-1500, NASA JPL Mars Yard"

Alchemy brings together a group of international artists whose work incorporates gold (or another metal disguised as gold). In each case, this precious material not only brings a sense of luxury to the work, but also ushers in connotations of the historic and cultural value various societies have placed on this rare element. As glamorous and sought after as gold may be, it’s capable of suggesting complicated politics and potent symbolism. The works in Alchemy embrace both dark and light readings of this glittering metal.

Artists for Alchemy are an international group at the forefront of contemporary practice. Teresa Margolles, whose gilded fragment of a building destroyed in a catastrophic earthquake comments on commemoration and monuments of grief. Zarina constructs minimalist shapes in gold leaf, referencing architecture and contemplative spirituality. Danh Vo gilds cardboard refuse, reimagining a simple box as wall sculpture, with marks of use as well as golden reminders of Mexican history. Luis Gispert combines gold chains and glittering stone into sparkling abstractions, referencing the decadence of rock n roll culture as well as post-war abstract painting. Lalla Essaydi uses glittering bullet casings to create garments and backdrops that refer to Islamic visual culture, which she then works into large-scale staged photographs. Rachel Sussman will create a site-specific work for the Art Center’s presentation of Alchemy, filling a crack in the floor with gold and resin in homage to the Japanese tradition of “Kintsukuroi,” in which ceramics are repaired with gold. Related photographs by Sussman will also be in the exhibition.

The full list of artists participating is as follows: James Lee Byars, Los Carpinteros, Dorothy Cross, Olga de Amaral, Lalla Essaydi, Don and Era Farnsworth, Luis Gispert, Laurent Grasso, Charles Lindsay, Teresa Margolles, Rachel Sussman, Hank Willis Thomas, Danh Vo, Shinji Turner-Yamamoto, Zarina

Alchemy is organized by Curator Laura Burkhalter.

JOIN US SUNDAY, MARCH 5TH FROM 2P-3P FOR THE CEREMONIAL DESTRUCTION OF "COSMIC MICROWAVE MANDALA" AT THE NEW MUSEUM LOS GATOS. 

Bring a vessel to collect some sand, and you can take home part of the birth of the universe! 

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This group exhibition features artists from the SETI Artist in Residence (AIR) program, including Danny Bazo, George Bolster, Charles Lindsay, Marko Peljhan, Rachel Sussman, Martin Wilner and Karl Yerkes. Making Contact marks the first SETI AIR group exhibition.

The work in Making Contact expands upon the SETI Institute’s mission to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. The exhibiting artists bring fresh perspectives to help navigate difficult concepts and help build bridges to broaden awareness of the science carried out at the SETI Institute. Additionally, many of the works have never been exhibited to the public.  “We’re excited to bring together the art, science and ideas of this unique international program and share it with our community,” says Marianne McGrath, NUMU art curator.

Rachel has two works in this exhibition: Krypton Relativity, and A Selected History of the Spacetime Continuum, a handwritten timeline spanning from before the Big Bang through to 10 to 100 billion years in the future.

Sidewalk Kintsukuroi, a semi-permanent installation in the walkway leading to MASS MoCA's entrance.

Organic Matters—Women to Watch 2015

Depictions of nature can illuminate themes of sexuality, gender politics, the abject, and the sublime. In the fourth installment of the NMWA’s Women to Watch exhibition series, contemporary artists use imagery and materials taken from the natural world. The works on view recontextualize images of plants and animals and redefine the relationships between women, nature, and art. Calling to mind entrenched associations of women with nature, the exhibition opens a dialogue about these traditional views. Women to Watch is an exhibition series featuring emerging and underrepresented women artists held every two to three years developed in conjunction with the museum’s national and international outreach committees.

The Oldest Living Things travels to Jackson Hole, Wyoming from May 16th to August 23, 2015. 

For more details visit the NMWA site.

In the Garden

Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has been used to document plant life and humans’ relationship to nature. Early photographic processes required vast amounts of light during exposure, and subjects were often posed in gardens flooded with sunlight. Both scientists and artists have recorded the beauty of plant structures, watching fiddlehead ferns unfurl and observing flowers as they bloom and decay. For amateur photographers, a photograph could capture a prizewinning flower or the image of a loved one among the splendor of the garden.

George Eastman House holds a unique collection of photographs that explore uses of gardens and how humans cultivate the landscapes that surround them. From famous locations such as Versailles to the simplest home vegetable garden, from worlds imagined by artists to food production recorded by journalists, the subjects in this exhibition broaden our understanding of photography and how it has been used to record the cultivated landscape.

Spanning the history of photography and photographic processes (daguerreotype to inkjet prints), more than 75 photographers will be represented, including Anna Atkins, Hippolyte Bayard, Southworth & Hawes, Eugene Atget, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Emmet Gowin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Barbara Norfleet, Mark Klett, Ablardo Morell, Andrew Buurman, Tanya Marcuse, Sharon Core, Ori Gersht, Rachel Sussman, and Brad Temkin.

The Oldest Living Things in the World travels to Bucknell University's Samek Art Museum from Jan 13th through March 22nd.

For more details visit the Samek site.