William Lamson, Invisible Universe, 2023. Glass, salt, electrical components, and concrete base.
William Lamson, Hydrologies (Atacama), 2014. HD video. 11:07 minutes.
Brooke Singer, Site Profile Flag #4 New Paltz.
Brooke Singer, Site Profile Flag #3 Prospect Park Brooklyn.
Brooke Singer, Unison, 2021. Limited edition book.
Ellen Driscoll, Grevillia and Strip Mine, 2017. Ink and collage on paper.
Substrata
Substrata brings together works by artists Ellen Driscoll, Will Lamson, and Brooke Singer, who engage water, foliage, minerals, soil, and seed to create works that represent or intervene in the landscape. Collectively, their works provoke viewers to reflect on human action or inaction in the natural environment. In her mixed-media drawings, Driscoll celebrates the unsung heroic work of plants to remediate contaminants from industrial sites, while Singer’s Site Profile Flag #4 records gradations of soil sediment, metals, and flora local to the Unison Arts complex through dyes made from site specimens. Lamson’s physical presence in landscapes as diverse as river and desert signifies humanity’s ongoing struggle with nature in pursuit of balance and productivity. In conversation with Adriane Colburn’s Paths of Extraction in the adjacent gallery, Substrata invites contemplation of our relationships with earth’s resources.
La exposición Sustrato reúne obras de Ellen Driscoll, Will Lamson y Brooke Singer, artistas que combinan agua, follaje, minerales, tierra y semillas en creaciones que representan o intervienen el paisaje. En conjunto, sus obras incitan a los espectadores a reflexionar sobre la acción o inacción humana en el entorno natural. A través de sus dibujos con medios mixtos, Driscoll destaca el trabajo poco reconocido de las plantas como descontaminantes de zonas industriales, mientras que la Bandera del perfil del sitio n.º 4 de Singer registra gradaciones de sedimentos del suelo, metales y flora local del complejo Unison Arts mediante tintes hechos con muestras del lugar. La presencia física de Lamson en paisajes tan diversos como ríos y desiertos simboliza la lucha constante de la humanidad con la naturaleza en busca de equilibrio y productividad. Sustrato, que dialoga con Rutas de extracción de Adriane Colburn, ubicada en la galería adyacente, es una invitación a contemplar los vínculos que entablamos con los recursos terrestres.
About the artists
Ellen Driscoll’s work encompasses sculpture, drawing, and public art. Recent public installations include “Site Woven” for Charles R. Jonas Federal Courthouse in Charlotte, NC, “CartOURgraphy” for Middle College High School and the International High School in Queens, and “Night to Day, Here and Away” for the Sarasota National Cemetery. Earlier works include “The Loophole of Retreat” at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, and “As Above, So Below” for Grand Central Terminal. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and a Fine Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work is in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art. She was Program Director of Studio Arts from 2013 to 2021 and Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Bard College as of 2023. She has been awarded the Outstanding Educator of the Year award for 2018 from the International Sculpture Center.
William Lamson is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves working with elemental forces to create durational performative actions. Set in landscapes as varied as New York’s East River and Chile’s Atacama Desert, his projects reveal the invisible systems and forces at play within these sites. Lamson’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Musuem, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. MOMA, and he has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Center For Land Use Interpretation, Storm King Art Center. He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and is a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow. He earned his MFA from Bard College, and he teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program in New York City.
Brooke Singer engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, gardens, workshops, photographs, maps, installations and public art that often involves participation in pursuit of social change. She is Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, a former fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2010-11), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co-founder of La Casita Verde (2013-). From 2018-2020 Brooke was a research affiliate with the Groffman Research Group, Environmental Sciences Initiative, Advanced Scientific Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as MoMA/PS1, Warhol Museum of Art, The Banff Centre, Neuberger Museum of Art, Diverseworks and Matadero Madrid. She has been in residence at New York Hall of Science, Marble House Project, Headlands Center for the Arts, Helsinki International Artist Programme, among others. Brooke’s writing has been published in Big Data and Society, Radical History Review and Brooklyn Rail. She is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Microsoft and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy.