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Featuring sculpture, photography and mixed-media installations by 15 artists who make replicas of nature, the show blurs the distinctions between natural and artificial, created and constructed.
“Virtual reality” takes on new meaning in “UnNaturally.”
UnNaturally is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International, New York. The exhibition was curated by Mary-Kay Lombino. The exhibition, tour and catalogue are made possible, in part, by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and Altria.
Eerie and funny by turns, “UnNaturally” suggests that the natural world can be reproduced with artificial materials – just like any other mass-produced product, said curator Lombino.
The artists included are Chris Astley, Gregory Crewdson, Jacci Den Hartog, Allan deSouza, Keith Edmier, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Jason Middlebrook, Nicoletta Munroe, Roxy Paine, Michael Pierzynski, Marc Quinn, Michelle Segre, Alyson Shotz, Frances Whitehead and Clara Williams.
Lombino – curator of exhibitions at the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach and a graduate of USC’s Museum Studies Program – said the inspiration for the show came from sculptor George Stone’s public art project for the Vermont/Beverly Metro Rail station in Los Angeles.
“Stone replicated the rocks that were there before the city took over, and he incorporated them into the station design,” Lombino said. “Driving past these giant fakes every day got me thinking about our complicated attitudes toward nature.”
The show, Lombino said, examines this very complexity. Some of the artists commodify nature, while others stage-manage it. And others improve on it, outdoing the original and “surpassing the real.”
“We have an ambivalent relationship with nature,” Lombino said. “We want to control it and live in a technologically advanced society. Yet we also want to preserve it.
“We long for an unspoiled landscape, but we're the ones who continually spoil it in the name of progress,” she said.
Meanwhile, Lombino said, humanity – inspired by Hollywood and Disney – produces more and more things that look natural but are not.
"I've become obsessed with checking out rocks and trees in public spaces," Lombino said. "Nine times out of 10 they are reproductions."
Many of the artists in the show, she said, take this idea to the max.
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