Exhibition Calendar

Mary Anne Kluth and Laurel Roth: Theory of the Unforeseen

Laurel Roth and Mary Anne Kluth are both fascinated by the process author Michael Pollan describes as "reductive science".

Roth's new works will examine the ways that science has enabled industrialized farming to manipulate humanity's place in a larger ecosystem. Using hardwoods carved and polished by hand to a perfect Brancusi-like finish, she meticulously recreates the largely unseen remains of food animals such as cows and pigs. Embellished with Swarovski crystals, and presented like relics, these bones celebrate the very evidence of selective breeding omitted in discussions of the current system of food consumption in the United States.

Kluth's new paintings will depict the dissonant relationship between humanity and landscape that can result when one focuses too closely on empirical perceptions. Contrasting loose, spontaneous mark-making with obsessive techniques and photo-realist depiction, the resulting images will relate the tragic romanticism of radio astronomers, individuals that spend their lives staring at computer models of places and events impossible to directly experience.

Both artists are interested in the ways people attempt to articulate a human niche in the cosmos, and the human strategies that both propel and foil that endeavor.