SHOHEI KATAYAMA

The exhibition title refers directly to a series of live performance pieces composed by John Cage that he called Imaginary Landscape. Cage remarked on the title, “It’s not a physical landscape. It’s a term reserved for the new technologies. It’s a landscape in the future. It’s as though you used technology to take you off the ground and go like Alice through the looking glass.”

 

Artists in this project are closely connected to the universe of technology, science, and civic cultural activism. The dialogue between the works and ideas of the artists creates an open platform that concerns with environmental, ecological, and sustainability issues. As the project assists and integrates cross-disciplinary coordination, it aims to advance basic understanding of the dynamics of human-environment systems.

 

Brandon Ballengée creates trans-disciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Ballengée has created a new version of his ongoing project, Love Motel for Insects for the exhibition. Love Motel for Insects is a series of outdoor installations intended to construct situations between humans and arthropods. The works use ultra-violet lights on enormous sculpted canvases to attract insects and create an opportunity for public interactions with nocturnal arthropods, which are not often seen.

 

Shohei Katayama constructs narratives for contemporary issues of ecology and spirituality: the increase of natural disasters and pollution, the demand for alternative energy, the gradual collapse and rebirth of communities, and the steady emergence of highly individualized identities.

 

Marian Tubbs uses familiar materials in assemblage, photography and paint to investigate philosophical questions with form. A recurring theme in her work is how materiality intersects with notions of value, pleasure, and reality. Her Open Model for an Affective Landscape, Virtual Becomes Real When Necessary is a 100% non-organic meditation on virtual simulations of natural ecologies.