Chaning Environments

Curatorial Rationale 

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In my exhibition, I wanted to express the growing concern of global warming in today’s society. I wanted to create symbols of this in my work, and incorporate different colors, shapes, and textures in my works to create an “unnatural” atmosphere. This atmosphere will help convey the message that something looks out of place, and it is a result of our actions on the environment. The goal of my exhibition is to make people aware of these actions and to maybe do more to reverse the effects of climate change. 

 

The use of color was extremely important and effective in my exhibition, as I used it as the main way to convey this “unnatural” look that I was striving towards. The main way I did this was through depicting many different forms of nature, whether it be with a tree or with a landscape. I used many photos from my surroundings and from travels. By depicting these landscapes, I found a great way to make this unnatural look was through changing the colors of the sky. We associate many things with the sky, whether it be the weather, and it can affect our mood in many ways. On a gray, cloudy day we often feel sadness or just overall tiredness. I wanted to make use of this association in my work. An example of this is in Nevada Mountain Range, where I wanted to make the sky a dark blue color, with some dark patches. The variation in colors of this work looks out of place to what we would normally expect to see in a desert mountain range - a bright blue sky. I also wanted to make the clouds blend in with this color and take up a large portion of the sky, almost as if terror is looming. The depiction of a desert also fits in with this, and I was able to utilize the variations in the color of the different browns we associate with sand in a desert. This makes the landscape look very desolate, and is something we can expect to see if we do not reverse the effects of climate change. In Arctic Caps, the use of color was extremely important in advancing my goal as the color of the sky had to look out of place, as if the sun was beaming down harshly onto the ice caps, ultimately melting it, a disastrous effect for our earth. Another way I utilized color to make an unnatural setting was in my photography and in my photomontages. In Small Succulent I wanted to make it look unnatural by raising the curve levels as well as raising the saturation. This unnatural look of an otherwise normal-looking plant helps convey my theme of unnatural-looking objects of nature that we should not be touching. I was able to combine these two ideas of the sky and the saturation in Pink City, where the sky is very saturated and has purples in it, looking unnatural to what we normally expect to see in a cityscape. 

 

I also made sure to combine the use of texture and form in Arctic Ice Caps. This work is meant to depict ice glaciers that are melting in the north and south poles. I wanted to create a texture in the sky, with variations in the oranges of the sky to appear as if it is beaming down on the ice glaciers. The glaciers also have variations in color, to depict the natural colors that we see on glaciers, as there are many blues and whites mixed in. In Poinsettia, I wanted to make a fake-looking plastic flower. I wanted to make the shape of the flower seem normal, as we can often mix up what is real and what is fake. With the use of shape and form, I was able to create a critique of this relationship. 

 

I envision the audience to see my exhibition and understand that it is a critique of our effects of climate change. I felt that the bright and saturated colors in works such as Eerie Outdoors and Rainbow Skies will catch their attention and allow them to think about the message being conveyed in these works. This is important because my goal is to spread awareness about our relationship with the earth, and how what we are doing is ultimately harming it. We can end up in an environment such as the ones I have depicted in my exhibition. I wanted to make it seem undesirable, and make environments that we associate with eeriness to help with this goal.