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The National Academy of Sciences Announces 'Strange Weather: New Paintings by Joy Garnett'
May 8 - July 30, 2007 - Open weekdays, 9am - 5pm
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, May 27, 2007, 1 - 3pm
National Academy of Sciences
2100 C Street NW, Upstairs Gallery
Washington, DC
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Rise, After Bosch (Superdome). 2005. 60x70 in.
"Strange Weather," an exhibition of paintings by Joy Garnett depicting environmental catastrophes, will be on public view from May 8 through July 30 at the National Academy of Sciences' headquarters, located at 2100 C St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
Joy Garnett gathers photographs of man-made and natural disasters from the Internet and renders the images as richly textured oil paintings. In the process, she locates tensions between the visceral power of paint and the fleeting nature of images in the mass media, addressing the evolving role of art in an information-saturated society.
Curated for the National Academy of Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 'Strange Weather,' Garnett takes widely distributed news images of a devastated New Orleans and recasts them as paintings in which geological, political, and sociological weather are inextricably intertwined.
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A full color illustrated poster with essays by curator and activist Lucy R. Lippard and The New York Times science reporter Andrew C. Revkin, is available on request.
Lucy Lippard writes: "'Strange Weather' is an astute understatement for what the world is undergoing. Equally strange is the apathy with which news of cataclysmic change is being received. Garnett's work reflects that change in a deceptively conventional manner… Landscape painting contains its own paradoxes in these days of photographic ascendancy, when photographs have finally been recognized as no more 'truthful' than any other medium. Curiously, the distance afforded by a painting permits a more intimate experience of the effects of Katrina than the fragmented, momentary blitz of media photography. By reinventing her photographic sources, Garnett gives us time to be there, in place, on solid ground, however terrifying that may be."
Based in New York City, Joy Garnett studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from the City College of New York.
Flood 2. 2005. 26x46 in.
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