Brave New World? Maybe, maybe not...

‘After Nature’ at The New Museum of Contemporary Art
July 17 – September 21, 2008

Werner Hertzog’s film Lessons of Darkness uses dramatic footage taken from a helicopter sweeping over thick black smoke of the 1991 Kuwait oil well fires. This is interspersed with stark testimonials by individuals who survived the traumas of the Gulf War on the ground. A heroic soundtrack, text-cards of bible quotes and Hertzog’s moralizing voiceover ensures Lessons of Darkness is a vision of a post-apocalyptic nightmare.

The exhibition ‘After Nature’ takes Hertzog’s film as a starting point for bringing together artworks that consider contemporary ideas about a future beyond mankind. Drawing on contemporary, futuristic and everything-in-between imagery, the art on display is a real mixed-bag; a sweeping emotional spectrum of hope, cynicism and apathy. However, in a climate of global-warming and environmental degradation, political and social commentary is pointedly kept to a minimum.

Zoë Leonard’s Tree (1997), fused together from metal and wood, acts as an eerie reminder of a cyborg technology that already exists; on urban footpaths trees are choked by the concrete they emerge from, only to be kept upright by metal beams and wires.

Zoe Leonard, Tree, 1997. Wood, steal and steal cables

Paweł Althamer’s life-size figures made from grass and animal intestines seem like crude set pieces for an end-of-the-world production. The artist depicts himself in Pawał and Monica (2002) with a female partner. The rough semi-translucent complexion of the couple composed with intestine skin contrasts with the video camera and cell phone they hold. Reminiscent of Duane Hanson’s hyper-real sculptures of tourists, Althamer’s Pawał and Monica become tourists of their own demise.

Leonard and Althamer’s works share a sinister and fatalistic perspective on civilization’s progress towards an end, however the older works in this multigenerational exhibition look to the future with a sincere sense of wonder at the wonderful.

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s luminous paintings of celestial cities from the 1950s, while depicting atomic explosions, use the apocalyptic subject to express a sense of awe at the infinite beauty they will create.

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Atomic Age, 1955

August Strindberg’s naïve attempts to create a photogram of the universe in the late 19th century (by simply exposing photographic plates to the night sky) result in images that looks remarkably like a galaxy. It is as if Strindberg’s hopeful vision alone drove the success of his project.

August Strindberg, Celestograph, 1894

When the political seeps into the exhibition it is strangely diminished, absurd even, within the grand vision of an uncertain, yet inevitable, future for the world.

Robert Kusmirowski’s life-size recreation of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin (looking like a pre-exploded Cornelia Parker installation) seems out of place by its specific thematic tethering to recent events. Connecting the dots between acts of terrorism in the late 20th century and the end of mankind seems… like a lot of messy philosophical and political dots.

Robert Kusmirowski's reproduction of Theodore Kaczynski's cabin

Erik van Lieshout’s video Hope (2008) tells the story of the artist and his mother traveling to Africa to, simply put, ‘save’ it. By cobbling together the most trivial and absurd footage from their trip van Lieshout attempts to express the ‘impossible absurdity of death’. The outcome is so self-conscious that, while it works as a critique of artists’ vanity, within the context of ‘Beyond Nature’ the implications of Africa's doom seem unfair in the light of van Lieshout’s deliberate indifference to his subject.

‘After Nature’ works best when the artworks take science-fiction, i.e. established ideas of what the future may be like, as a starting point for extrapolating on contemporary states of mind. It is certainly interesting to imagine a world ‘after nature’, and art is a dynamic tool for theorizing space as the next frontier. Robert Cuoghi’s delicate images of crystallized biomorphic forms could be representations of a star being born. Or perhaps a star’s death? The intentional ambiguity over whether the concept of ‘after nature’ is an ultimate end or a beautiful beginning stimulates a sense of infinite possibly… and this is no small achievement.