Flora, Fauna, Vista

Reality and fantasy, the enchanted and the everyday, intertwine in the imagery presented in this exhibition: animals, plants, and landscapes.

While the subjects of photographs by Alessandra Sanguinetti and Laura Lee Brown were captured live in locations around the globe, the animals in Chris Roberts-Antieu’s fabric tableaux recall fairy tales, and Mitch Eckert’s layered composites are sourced from photos he took of dioramas in various natural history museums, bringing together species and habitats that wouldn’t coexist in the natural world. This spectrum reflects the variety of relationships between humans and animals, from pets to collected specimens to figments of the imagination, imbued with meaning and magic. Roos Holleman’s portrait of a taxidermy bird of paradise enlarges the once-living specimen that inspired this work. Describing her practice, the artists says: “They are subjects with a tactile exterior, but often with something going on underneath their surface. I am a kind of shaman, using crayons to blow life into un-living things.”