The Horticultural Society of New York Exhibition for UBS Art Gallery, New York
IMPLANT
August 7 - October 31, 2008
The thrust of this exhibition is rooted in a concept offered by horticultural author Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire) who suggests that, in effect, THEY CONTROL US - that is the plants, controlling the humans. The tendency is natural: we think we use plants to further our lives. Whether for food, experiments, outdoor enjoyment, indoor decor, or employment, the human race has an intimate, necessary bond with plants. Innately, we think we use this bond to our advantage. The truth is we have it all backwards. The plants use us - to further their lives, to make their families live generations, even centuries longer than ours. After all, they were here first. Wisdom comes with time.
In his book, Pollan posits this idea in terms of four plants: the apple tree, the tulip bulb, the marijuana plant and the potato. He considers the greater social and cultural needs of humans, and how these specific plants figure into that equation. What is interesting in this case is his idea and how it relates to art, and specifically, artistic production. It is possible that when an artist makes use of a plant, i.e. flower, tree, or natural landscape in their composition, it is due to a direct connection transmitted by presumably innocuous living things. The result is a bond forged in the form of a personal relationship with the individual artist. An artist's relationship to nature can be seen universally as well. The plant's authority is felt strongly through time; they compel us to perpetually depict the history of their evolution throughout artistic periods. Essentially, an artist chooses to use botanical subjects in their work, because the plant has already chosen them first. The bond has been forged; the use becomes intrinsic. Cleverly, the plant has found a way to immortalize itself - to take eternal life in the form of an artwork.
This exhibition is to be about that very furtive, cosmic level where artwork is conceived, made and shown - emphasized by the equally mysterious way that plants find their way into that process. We can see this in a wide variety of artistic media - the plants have found their way into the concept, pigment, celluloid, dimensional materials, pixels, sound and ink.
To articulate this greater idea into its constituent parts, the individual ten spaces offered by the gallery become physical spaces in which the idea is enacted. I think of the bays as outcroppings, and the plant-based works inside as germinations of the concept.