The sky we stand on: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles

Mark Dion
Olafur Eliasson
Jónsi
Laura Lima
Charles Long
Yuko Mohri
Lisa Oppenheim
Dana Powell
Analia Saban
Tomás Saraceno
Sarah Sze

Coinciding with the Getty’s landmark initiative, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles is pleased to present The sky we stand on, an exhibition of gallery artists who explore the intersections of art and science, both past and present. In a diverse range of mediums, the artists address the ongoing effects of human industry and technological advancements on our planet, evoking the beauty and fragility of our landscape and climate.

Addressing temporality, evolution, and decay, several works speculate on the world’s past and future. Sarah Sze’s fragmented Divide Light if you Dare (Fallen Sky Series) recalls eroded, ancient architecture, collapsing the horizon line with its mirrored steel surface. Complemented by sculptural arrangements from her Nest and Fragment series, Sze explores the idea of fragmentation as it pertains to the delicate balance and order of the universe and landscape. Yuko Mohri’s Decomposition series taps into the life cycle of decaying fruit, while Jónsi’s Tremor, an auditory work inspired by the movement of tectonic plates, evokes a rich and otherworldly landscape that speaks to the temporal vibration of both vocal cords and earthquakes.This same fragility of landscape is referenced in Olafur Eliasson’s painting Colour experiment no. 115 (Jokullsalon), which is composed of a gradient based on the spectrum of colors found in a photograph of an Icelandic landscape, over which layers of pure pigment are mixed with melting sea ice from the same region.

Through a macro lens, the landscape and history of Los Angeles is explored in the work of Charles Long, whose sculptural form belies its source material: bird droppings that were observed and photographed along the concrete banks of the LA River. Mark Dion’s humorous diagrammatic drawings blend artifice and reality to examine the ways that dominant ideologies or institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge and the natural world. After an extended residency, replicas of these drawings, among others, are on view as part of Excavations, Dion’s PST exhibition at the La Brea Tar Pits. Exploring ideas around environmentalism and the place of humans in nature, Dana Powell’s intimate paintings offer vignettes charged with anxiety or anticipation, while Laura Lima’s ethereal Levianes punctures the liminal zone between this world and the next, incorporating a surreal and evolving atmosphere using tulle and dissipating dry ice.

The beauty, prescience, and evolving nature of this planet’s speculative future cannot be separated from the billions of people and millions of species that inhabit it. Tomás Saraceno’s Hybrid Dark semi-social solitary Cluster FK5 384 built by: an ensemble of Cyrtophora citricola - three weeks, a solo Linyphia triangularis - one week, a suspended spider web, offers a closer look into the complex social and spatial structures of naturally made architecture, which act as a model and metaphor for human settlements and networking. The nuances of perception are explored in Eliasson’s Kaleidoscope for solar amplification, offering a new way of seeing and interpreting the world around us. Related works are included in Eliasson’s major survey, OPEN, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which broadly engages with the changing atmosphere of L.A. through new sensory experiences.

Systems for codifying information and new, trial and error technological methodologies are explored in new works by Analia Saban, which expand the two and three-dimensional qualities of painting and sculpture; while Lisa Oppenheim’s Landscape Portrait offers a glimpse into the intricacies of tree species that form an abstract landscape or otherworldly topology.

Throughout the exhibition, micro and macro perceptions of the expanded universe and man-made systems are put into consideration, questioning the balance – or precariousness – of both present and future.

Photo by Jeff McLane