'Ecotopia' at the International Center of Photography

Thursday, 24 August 2006 11:48

New York City - Nearly forty contemporary artists from fourteen countries respond to the challenges of global environmental change in Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video.  The exhibition is on view from September 14, 2006 to January 7, 2007, at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43^rd Street).  Filling ICP's entire gallery space and including over 100 photographic, video, and installation works, Ecotopia will introduce striking new perspectives on humanity's increasingly fraught relation to the natural world and to the planet that sustains us.  At the same time, the exhibition will serve as a critical survey of current artistic trends.

Ecotopia is organized b y ICP’s four senior curators—Brian Wallis, Edward Earle, Carol Squiers, and Christopher Phillips—and assistant curator Joanna Lehan.  The exhibition encompasses an unusually broad spectrum of recent works that respond to environmental concerns such as deforestation, global warming, and species extinction.  Large-scale color landscape photographs will examine new ways of translating the experience of place, and harrowing photojournalistic accounts will detail the global traffic in endangered species.  Video installations as well as artists' web sites will explore alternative futures for the earth and its inhabitants.

The ICP Triennial is the only recurring exhibition in the United States that specializes in international contemporary photography and video.  The Triennial not only provides an unparalleled opportunity for U.S. audiences to encounter new works by recognized figures but also to discover exceptional artists who have not yet received wide attention in this country.  Building on the critical and popular success of Strangers, the first ICP Triennial (2003), Ecotopia will demonstrate ICP’s commitment to highlighting innovative work that speaks to the most important issues of our time.

Exhibition Highlights

Robert Adams will present a selection of photographs, for the most part previously unexhibited, from the series "Turning Back."  These works portray the bleak aftermath of the clear-cutting of Oregon forests.  Of this series, Adams says, "I felt that I was reporting on a slaughter."

For his current project "American Power," Mitch Epstein has made large-scale color photographs that depict scenes associated with the production of energy in the United States--a country that consumes a disproportionate amount of the world's natural resources.

Mary Mattingly's staged color photographs conjure up a post-catastrophe world where high-tech nomads that she calls "navigators" roam the earth, which has become a water-bound Eden.

Sam Easterson attaches tiny, custom-made video cameras to a remarkable variety of animals and insects.  The resulting short videos offer unexpected and sometimes hilarious visions of the natural world seen from the perspective of these creatures.

Clifford Ross uses a self-designed camera that enables him to make enormous and richly detailed color landscape photographs.  For this exhibition he will show a new work, a spectacular six-by-ten-foot photograph of Mount Sopris in Colorado.

Amphibious (Login-Logout), a short film by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, follows six tortoises perched on a log that is drifting down the Pearl River in southern China.  Glimpses of the massive construction underway on the riverbanks hint at the environmental degradations that have accompanied China’s rapid entry into the global economy.

In the video Otolith (2003), the Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar, Richard Couzins) combines its own video footage with archival film to suggest how our planet's recent history will appear to a new breed of space-dwelling humans who can no longer function in earth's environment.

Imported Crows is a riveting documentary short by Croatian filmmaker Goran Dević.  It examines the efforts of the townspeople of Sisak, Croatia, to combat a population of crows—originally brought in to control unwanted insects—that has grown to alarming proportions.  The film obliquely addresses the recent history of the Balkans, demonstrating how the region’s unresolved ethnic tensions have been displaced onto the natural environment.

Mark Dion's installation Bureau of Wildlife Surveillance, created especially for this exhibition, presents a mock government office that uses cameras linked to heat sensors to spy on the nocturnal activities of animals.

Marine Hugonnier's video installation The Last Tour takes the viewer on a fictional final tour of the breathtaking nature park around the Matterhorn before the Alpine peak is permanently closed to visitors.

Diana Thater's video installation Perfect Devotion presents a group of domesticated tigers frolicking in a swimming pool on the grounds of a California rescue compound.  Thater's use of obsolescent film materials and techniques parallels the almost certain extinction of wild tigers in the near future.

In Wang Qingsong's monumental photographic triptych Come Come, hundreds of banner-carrying protestors stage a mock demonstration in the dried-up bed of the former Grand Canal.  The banners contrast China's tumultuous past with its consumption-obsessed present.

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