“The Delightful Land” Exhibition
The Horticultural Society of New York
This event has ended.
The Hort presents The Delightful Land, a group exhibition of tropical paintings by four local emerging artists. Botanists, scientists, and explorers have long mined the tropics for plants, raw materials, food, and medicine. The lush landscapes have also attracted artists, who have found inspiration in the color, bounty, wildness, and perceived otherness of the tropical landscape
Taking its title from a painting by Paul Gauguin (Te Nave Nave Fenua in Tahitian), a tropical rendition of Eden and Eve’s fall from grace, this exhibition explores how contemporary artists are still drawn to the tropics as a fruitful paradise, but are challenged by how to depict these landscapes in a postcolonial age.
In The Delightful Land, Amy Lincoln’s matter-of-fact paintings of tropical birds recall Rousseau’s primitivist dreamscapes; large-scale beachside portraits by Ryan Schneider are an update on the exoticism of Gauguin; Natalie Westbrook’s mixed-media paintings evoke Matisse’s use of color, pattern, and cut paper; and Kristina Lee’s dense jungle landscapes reveal hidden abstracted figures amidst the foliage.
Each artist interprets the tropics through his or her own first-hand experiences but also, and perhaps more apparently, through the mediated influences of art and culture.
Media
Schedule
from August 07, 2013 to September 13, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-08-07 from 18:00 to 20:00
Artist(s)
Kristina Lee, Amy Lincoln, Ryan Schneider, Natalie Westbrook