Diane Burko’s Greatest Emergency

Diane Burko, Amazon 7, Diptych A, 2022, mixed media on canvas, 20×20 inches,  In the collection of Joseph and Pamela Yohlin

This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The third article in this series highlights the work of American artist Diane Burko.


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Josh Kline’s Greatest Emergency

Josh Kline, Unemployment, installation view, 2016

This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The second article in this series highlights the work of American artist Josh Kline.

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Sari Carel: A More Perfect Circle

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Sari Carel, A More Perfect Circle, 2024. Courtesy KODA, photo by Argenis Apolinario.

Artist and activist Sari Carel created A More Perfect Circle, a series of ceramic sculptures inspired by the single-use coffee cup, a ubiquitous object that brings into focus people’s daily experience of interacting with trash. Lentol Garden in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, hosts its first public art project that includes columns built of stacked ceramic forms and disks in the shape of plastic cup covers. The handmade, intentional, and individualized quality of each unit contrasts with the mass-manufactured coffee cup that inspires this project. Some of the drawings, experiments and observations that inform the installation are on view at the Greenpoint Library. A series of programs with 350Brooklyn and Climate Families NYC accompany the exhibition. Find out more here. The project is organized by KODA, a New York-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to mid-career artists of diverse backgrounds. It is curated by Jennifer McGregor, who interviews Sari Carel for the Hot Air section in Art Spiel.

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Transgressing Lands at the Boiler

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Transgressing Lands: Eleven Contemporary Artists Reimagine a Horizon Installation View. Photo: Martin Seck

The current group exhibition at The Boiler | ELM Foundation, Transgressing Lands, curated by A.E. Chapman, features work by Jeannine Bardo, Nancy Cohen, Cristina de Gennaro, Deborah Jack, Natalie Moore, Itty S. Neuhaus, Nazanin Noroozi, Lina Puerta, Corinne Teed, Elizabeth Velazquez, and Letha Wilson, who interpret the horizon’s role as a foundational element for understanding our place in the world. The artists confront pressing issues—preserving landscapes under threat, the ramifications of climate change, the realities of displacement and conflict, the significance of mindfulness, challenging colonial legacies, and the ever-present cycles of destruction and rejuvenation. Chapman’s direction for the exhibition invites viewers to engage with how landscapes can anchor us in the present moment and our collective history.

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In the End, a Devastating Beauty at Stand4 Gallery

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Susan Hoffman Fishman (l) and Leslie Sobel @ Five Points Center for the Arts Artist Residency, June 2022

Susan Hoffman Fishman and Leslie Sobel met in 2019 at a virtual “mixer” sponsored by SciArt Initiative for artists and scientists who either were already working together or who wanted to work together collaboratively. Hoffman and Sobel quickly determined that their mutual interests in water and the climate crisis overlapped. Looking for ways to collaborate, they applied for and were awarded a joint residency in 2021 during the height of the COVID pandemic at Planet Labs, a global satellite imaging company based in San Francisco. Planet had created its residency program to see what happened when artists were given access to their scientists and satellite resources. Because of COVID, the three-month residency ended up being entirely virtual.

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Watershed—Grace Mitchell in conversation with Mary McCoy

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A landscape with a river and a blue sky

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Grace Mitchell-Eternal Return IV, Oil on panel, 30”x30”, 2022

The deep, rich colors and textures of Grace Mitchell’s oil paintings will draw you in, but it’s often the title that sets you thinking. Interweaving layers of color glow through the marsh grasses in her newest series, Watershed Assessment. You could get lost in the sheer beauty of these paintings with their glints of tidal water and shadowy mountains looming in the distance, all saturated with a moist, misty atmosphere that seems to glow with fecundity. But the title gives pause. These lush, luminous landscapes are meant to be “assessed,” and careful observation finds them full of scars and flaws.

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Rachel Frank: Ritual and Rehabilitation

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A collage of hands holding a clay dog

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Rewilding Franconia Sculpture Park, Participatory Performance as part of 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial, Franconia Sculpture Park, 2022. Photographer: Rachel Frank

Rachel Frank is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice includes sculpture, video, and performance. Her art explores our shifting perspectives towards natural history, climate change, and relationships with non-human species. She grew up near Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, the birthplace of American paleontology, where large mammoth and other megafauna fossils were found, altering Western views on extinction and evolution. She works as a staff wildlife care manager at The Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Manhattan.

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Tempestry Project: Emily McNeil and Asy Connelly with Amy Brady

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Amy Brady published in her newsletter Burning World a conversation with Emily McNeil and Asy Connelly, a knitter and data scientist who founded the Tempestry Project, a fiber art collaboration that uses yarn and other fibers to create artful representations of climate data. This summer, they are partnering with Colossal Magazine and the Design Museum of Chicago in two different ways: first, their “Paleo New Normal Tempestry” will be exhibited in the museum’s group show, At the Precipice. And secondly, they’re collaborating with the museum to develop a Chicago Tempestry Collection that will be exhibited along with the Paleo piece. Amy Brady asked Emily and Asy about their work and what they hope viewers take away from their art. 

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Gabriel Chaile: Longing For Nature

A group of people walking on a path near a large pot

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Gabriel Chaile, El viento sopla donde quiere (The Wind Blows Where It Wishes), 2023. Adobe and mixed metal. 303 (L) x 173 (H) x 109 (W) in. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy the High Line.

Nestled in the constructed landscape of the High Line, Argentine artist Gabriel Chaile’s colossal sculpture, El viento sopla donde quiere (2023), embodies a nostalgic, transhistorical exploration of humanity’s place within and through nature. 

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Mark Tribe: Learning to Love the Future

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Mark Tribe, Bottsford Hollow, 2012, inkjet print, 24” x 38”. From the series Rare Earth.

A founder of Rhizome, Mark Tribe is known for his early contributions to the field of new media art and his socially-engaged performances and installations. His current practice engages the power of aesthetic experience to illuminate the challenges we and future generations will face in the climate crisis. Since 2012, he has made landscape pictures that unpack American ideas about nature and land, from Manifest Destiny to contemporary environmentalism. In this interview, Mark talks about his views on the climate, his landscapes, and his integration of machine learning tools (AI) into his latest project Learning to Love the Future.

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