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Événement
Suzanne Anker, Artist Talk: Arctic Gardens and the Sixth Extinction
Suzanne Anker, noted artist and Chair of BFA Fine Arts at SVA, speaks about her innovative work, in the concurrent exhibition at the Flatiron Project Space, exploring the onrushing ecological catastrophe.
BFA Visual & Critical Studies annually exhibits the work of a faculty member who has made a significant contribution to the SVA community. This year, the department presents an exhibition of new work by BFA Fine Arts Chair Suzanne Anker in the Flatiron Project Space from Tuesday, August 6, through Wednesday, September 25. A reception will be held on Thursday, September 12, 6:00 8:00pm.
The artist has prepared the following statement about the work:
Drifting back in time, five mass extinctions have marked Earth's history. Such catastrophic events are unexceptional. Rather they are intrinsic to the rotating cycle of the planet's elements. Geological clocks with their time spans are elusive concepts to grasp because they are calculated in millions, if not billions of years. Even algae are found in ice cores of Antarctica. Imagine the Arctic as a tropical jungle fifty million years ago. "Arctic Gardens and the Sixth Extinction" is a series of digital prints that fuse seasonal changes into a single image. Each day we wake, the seasons remake themselves: a new reality for which Anker has coined the term Monoseason. As temperatures rise and fall, soil turns into mudslides, fires erupt, draughts incinerate crops, diseases shift from animals to humans, and strange viruses mutate globally. Also included in the exhibition are three-dimensional hand painted rapid prototype sculptures corresponding to the original collages. A video, entitled "Insecta" adds the dimension of time and sound to the exhibition.
Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and the biological sciences. Her practice investigates the ways in which nature is being altered in the 21st century. Concerned with genetics, climate change, species extinction and non-human life forms, she calls attention to the beauty of life and the necessity for enlightened thinking about natures tangled bank. Anker frequently works with pre-defined and found materials botanical specimens, medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatus, microscopic images and geological specimens. She works in a variety of mediums ranging from digital sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED lights. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale at CUBE, China; the Wuhan Biennale, China; the Anyang Public Art Project, Korea; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Daejeon Biennale, Korea; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; P.S.1 Museum, New York, NY; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Berliner Medizin Historisches Museum der Charité, Berlin, Germany; the Center for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Germany; the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; and the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Ankers exhibitions have been the subject of reviews and articles in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail and Nature. She has hosted twenty episodes of the Bio Blurb show, an Internet radio program originally on WPS1 Art Radio, in collaboration with MoMA in NYC, now archived on Alana Heiss Clocktower Productions. She has been a speaker at Harvard University, Cambridge University, Yale University, the London School of Economics, the Max-Planck Institute, University of Leiden, the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Banff Art Center among many others. Chairing SVAs Fine Arts Department in NYC since 2005, Ms. Anker continues to interweave traditional and experimental media into her departments digital initiative and the SVA Bio Art Lab. This year she is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award sponsored by the Society of Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA).
The exhibition has been curated by SVA BFA faculty member Peter Hristoff (BFA 1981 Fine Arts) and the artist.
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