January 5- February 3, 2013

Opening Saturday January 5th, 6-10pm

Room 1 & Back Yard:

Studio Defense Complex
RAMPART: Positive + Negative

For this exhibition, artists Jonathan Taube and Imen Djouini (The DEFENSE COMPLEX) have developed a body of research on the abstract typology of artificial borders in areas of conflict that will take the form of a large scale earthwork. In this work they question the perspective of the landscape as obscured by constructed borders and how this impacts the long history of romantic imagery of that landscape.

Room 2:

Curated by Morgana King

A New Year's diorama to welcome 2013, by Morgana King and friends.

Rooms 3 & 4:

Judy Natal
Future Perfect

Future Perfect entails a photographic sweep of three peculiarly evocative sites where human intervention and land use are exploring the quality and state of futurity. A Las Vegas desert preserve that provides a vision for a sustainable future, Biosphere 2 experimental tracts in Oracle, Arizona, and Iceland’s geothermal landscapes are worlds apart from each other, but become perfect foils to imagine what the landscapes of the future might look like. The photographs establish unexpected but compelling resonances that distill and display our hopes, perceptions and misunderstandings of nature, and suggest both the potential and pitfalls of our future on earth. Natal portrays these sties as indications of our future, illuminating the present moment and the choices we have yet to make. Future Perfect invites and provokes opportunities for reflection and analysis, while examining the global interconnectedness of such strong, yet ultimately fragile landscapes. The photographs are at once extreme and provocative, bringing together aesthetic and scientific impulses to embrace a wide range of contemporary concerns-including the relationships between landscape and ideology, human response and responsibility to natural environments. Her work invites and provokes opportunities for reflection and analysis, and poetically moves from clear, precise imaging to layers of steam, ambiguity and possibility while examining the global interconnectedness of such strong, yet ultimately fragile and threatened landscapes.