In a special opportunity for all the gallery artists to be seen in one comprehensive survey, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is extremely pleased to present Controlled, Contained, Configured. The exhibition is comprised of three consecutive rotating groupings of exciting new work, each running for three weeks.

Part 1, Controlled, features Uta Barth, Sandra Cinto, Mat Collishaw, Mark Dion, Olafur Eliasson and Carla Klein; each contributing work that deals with man’s interaction with, and attempt to control, elements from nature. Each work illustrates a certain overlap between culture and nature, showing the filtered lens that culture places between man and his environment.

‘Jokla series’ documents the largest glacial river in Eastern Iceland ice field, from source to mouth. Presented in the form of a grid, by aerial view, we perceive this immense natural phenomena through an artificial perspective. On the opposite wall in the main space, Olafur presents a map of the world’s time zones in the form of 24 vertical neon bars. Controlled by an internal computer mechanism, each bar lights up when their respective time zones are in daylight, resulting in a shifting pattern of light.

Carla Klein contributes two large scale oil on canvas works that represent the vast perspective laid out to visitors of the great salt flats of the Utah desert. As in all of Carla’s works, these paintings are derived from Klein’s own photography and thus play with issues of abstraction vs. representation, realism vs. expressionism, object vs. image. Lushly painted and tightly conceived, in the context of the show these works show how modern man’s most intimate experiences with nature are commonly mediated by the front windshield of an automobile, or the lens of a camera.

Mark Dion’s work consistently explores man’s interest in the display and presentation of science and nature. ‘Mobile Bio-Type: Eastern Woodlands’ displaces and displays a patch of living earth and fauna, set within a small greenhouse. Sitting atop two wheels with two cart handles on one side, tiles illustrating the wildlife of the ecosystem decorate the exterior base of the cart while fauna from the forest lives and breathes within the glass and aluminum structure.

In the gallery’s second space, Mat Collishaw contributes a new video sculpture called ‘Baccus.’ In a classic juxtaposition of video projection on sculpture, a small Baroque sculptural figure presents a visual platter to the viewer. Using elements of a computer monitor and a silver cup, two snakes appear to slither up and around, ‘virtually’ striking the viewer. In the same space, Sandra Cinto presents a new multi-layered MDF drawing, exquisitiely rendering linear images of interconnected solar systems and stars in a magical sky.

Uta Barth’s latest series of photographic works are the first to reintroduce a central subject back into her images. And it is a rather culturally and historically loaded one at that, as these are pictures of flowers placed on a single desk in her home. As all of Uta’s work has accomplished in different ways, the multiple panels within each work from this series simultaneously replicate and represent the act of ‘looking’. In Untitled (2005.17), Barth presents four images of the same flower on four individual panels. While each composition is identical, focus and color saturation shift dramatically from one panel to the next, as if to demonstrate the impression and fade of the retinal image and afterimage.

Please return later this month and next, to see the subsequent groupings of new works by gallery artists:

Part 2, Contained, features work by Hubbard/Birchler, Sabine Hornig, Ian Kiaer, Charles Long, Ernesto Neto and Nicole Wermers, with works that address issues of architecture and space. Open October 5 - 22.

Part 3, Configured, uses the human figure as the main element of an overall composition, and features work by AVL, Elmgreen and Dragset, Siobhán Hapaska, Jason Meadows, Peggy Preheim, and Thomas Scheibitz. Open October 25 to November 12.

Mark Dion opens a solo exhibition November 19.

For further information and images please contact Claire Pauley, [email protected]