August, 2002

Current Exhibit

EARTH WORKS

Exhibition: August 3rd to 31st, 2002

Opening: Saturday, August 3, 7-10 pm

This exhibition features 3 cutting-edge artists whose

work addresses the mediated experience and perception

of 'nature' through installation.

Artists:

Evan Sugerman (New York)- mediated via technology

Chris Tallon (LA)- mediated via consumerism

Roman Vasseur (London) - mediated via language

Curator's Introduction

Earth Works

Installation art and nature as the 'Other'

Evan Sugerman (NY), Chris Tallon (LA) and Roman

Vasseur (UK) all attend to conceptions of 'nature'

(lowercase n) grounded within the urban. There is at

play here a distancing mechanism, from a direct

relationship to nature (if that is, in fact, possible

at all) built from a city dwellers tools of language

and technology. Via the intervention of culture the

experience and perception of nature is mediated

through these tools available to us. How this works is

the unifying agenda of these three artists.

Associative systems of understanding and linkage

inform the meanderings of conceptual and theoretical

rivers which these works delve into without ignoring

the visual pleasures both visceral and compositional,

as material and design. These are works which do not

hide behind an anthropomorphasized mask of nature but

engage directly with how we go about understanding it.

This is not to say, however, that they share

ideologies. As with many Raid Projects it is the

divergence that is where our interest must lay. Art as

a practice fascinates each of us in many ways but it

is the variety of human responses that is truly

amazing and is at the core of our curatorial approach.

These three artists provide ample proof of the power

of diversity and intelligence in art.

Max Presneill

July 2002