Luciana Abait on the Verge
Luciana Abait’s survey exhibition opens Sept. 17
Artist’s Reception: Saturday, Sept. 24, 1 – 3 p.m.
The Laband Art Gallery is delighted to present the first survey exhibition of painting, photography, sculpture, video installation and augmented reality by artist Luciana Abait, whose striking works shine a light on the issues of environmental fragility and climate change. Luciana Abait: On the Verge includes more than 20 pieces conjuring imaginary worlds that portend global climate catastrophe and show signs of humankind’s intrusion on nature.
Abait was born in 1971 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and immigrated in 1997 to the United States. The artist draws from her own personal feelings of displacement and vulnerability to urge viewers to consider how global warming is wreaking havoc, especially on the lives of climate migrants. She revels in the presentation of incongruities in her vivid landscapes — in color, size, and scale — to convey her ideas. One of her newest works speaks to the dire conditions and sense of deprivation we face under unprecedented planetary duress. Agua (2021) is a site-specific digital projection of a cascading waterfall that has been shown previously for only a few hours at outdoor festivals. Now, it is installed for the first time inside the Laband Art Gallery as a 20-foot-tall voluminous artifact of nature.
Artists such as Abait play a crucial dimension in how they are able to lead us to a promising future. Can art solve our climate crisis? It can’t. Or rather, it can’t alone. To borrow from the preeminent artistic director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, Hans Ulrich Obrist, from a recent interview, “We could never say that art can solve this very massive problem. But I think no field can solve this on its own. Art can be a wake-up call.” In this timely exhibition, visitors are invited to experience Abait’s environmentally and politically charged immersive landscapes with a heightened sense of ecological awareness.
Exhibition dates: September 17 – Dec. 10
