The Solace of Amnesia : Curated by Alexis Rockman and Katherine Gass Stowe

12 May - 25 November 2018 Vermont

Approximately twenty-five artists are represented in The Solace of Amnesia, a group exhibition curated by American artist Alexis Rockman and Katherine Gass Stowe, which includes over thirty paintings, photographs, works on paper and sculptures selected from the Hall and Hall Art Foundation collections.
INFORMATION

Richard Artschwager, Pig, 1981

Rockman and Gass Stowe define “The Solace of Amnesia” as a craving to forget as a form of comfort and self-medication. Recognizing that the planet is in an age of profound environmental transformation, we find ourselves estranged and alienated from the ecosystems in which we evolved. How do we reconcile our knowledge of what is happening, our behavior, and political policies that undermine our best interests and our future? The continued loss of bio and ecophilia - our love for and central relationship to the natural world - has become something we deny even as we grow more acutely melancholic in this time of open political hostility to the realities of climate change. The intergenerational problems we are causing now will change the world in ways we can’t imagine. Yet, as author, environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben has said, “There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend it’s not really there.” (The End of Nature, 1989). The selected works explore some of the ecological, socio-political and psychological aspects of life in our world today.
Robert Rauschenberg, Meta Meta Glut, 1987

Robert Rauschenberg’s Glut sculptures, such as Meta Meta Glut (1987), are made from discarded car parts, gas-station signs and scrap-metal. Signifying our lifestyle of copious waste, they are effigies to Texas’ booming oil market in the mid-80s. The artist has described them as “souvenirs without nostalgia”.
Michael Joo, Improved Rack #4 (Moose), 2004

The found and reconstructed antlers in Michael Joo’s Improved Rack #4 (Moose) (2004) question organic and enhanced "identities”, symbols of growth and power, and the merger of the artificial with the natural. As we rely more heavily on technology to solve human problems, the implications of a future landscape overrun by hardware and a plethora of unintended hybrid lifeforms – the focus of many popular movies today -- becomes more and more real.
Katherine Bradford, Large Ocean Painting, 2016

Katherine Bradford makes paintings about enchantment and universality – as she describes, “something bigger than everyday life”. In Large Ocean Painting (2016), swimmers move amongst big toothy water creatures, dream-like and floating together in close proximity through a luminous purple sea. Human vulnerability, comical co-mingling and a sense that there is no separation between man and beast resonate when considering how videos of wild animals awkwardly moving through suburban settings are now common place on YouTube, and animal and aquatic populations are being pushed from their natural habitats into urban spaces that are unintended for wildlife.
Ansel Adams, Storm Surf, Timber Cove, California, 1960

Storm Surf, Timber Cove, California (1963) by renowned American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, presents the Edenic memory of an untouched earth. The image of the sea crashing into black rocks on an empty, jagged shore conjures up a powerful ideal of untamed nature.
Anselm Kiefer, Stefan!, 1975

Alexis Rockman is an internationally known artist whose work has been displayed extensively since 1985. Traveling solo museum exhibitions include The Great Lakes Cycle, Grand Rapids Art Museum, MI (2018–20); Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2010); and Manifest Destiny, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2005). Rockman’s work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. His oeuvre has been the subject of numerous exhibition catalogues and monographic publications, including A Natural History of New York City (2016); East End Field Drawings (2015); and Alexis Rockman (2003). Rockman lives in New York.
Alexis Rockman, Fire, 2006

Katherine Gass Stowe is Founder and Chief Curator of James Company Contemporary Art Projects, a curatorial and advisory firm that builds private and public collections, installations, and related programming across a variety of industries for clients worldwide. Katie is the contracted New York region collections curator for Bank of America, a post she has held since 2002. She was the Global Art Curator for Jumeirah Group from 2007 - 2012. She has an M.A. in the History of American Art Advocacy from The Gallatin School at New York University, has held posts at The Whitney Museum and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and has served on the Board of Directors of Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, Maine, and SculptureCenter, New York. Katie is a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors and Art Table. Most recently she developed a collection for the award-winning The Beekman, A Thompson Hotel, in New York City.
Installation Views
Artworks
Events
- Events
  CURATOR'S TOUR OF THE SOLACE OF AMNESIA
  With Alexis Rockman and Katherine Gass Stowe 23 September 2018
  READ MORE
Press
- Press
  DELICIOUS LINE
  THE SOLACE OF AMNESIA, HALL ART FOUNDATION September 24, 2018
  Katherine Gass Stowe's and Alexis Rockman's curatorial take on the Hall Art Foundation's huge collection is sly and enlightening in its choices and placements. One opens the door on Damien...
- Press
  THE BOSTON GLOBE
  SUMMER ARTS PREVIEW: CRITIC'S PICKS May 20, 2018
  THE SOLACE OF AMNESIA Scientists offer evidence of global warming, but policy change is slow. Painter Alexis Rockman and curator Katherine Gass Stowe organized this exhibition, which examines our reluctance...
Artists
Installation views: Jeffrey Nintzel

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