The Marin Art & Garden Center presented the exhibition “Between Nature & Technology,” multi-media artworks by Courtney Egan and David Sullivan, in The Studio at Marin Art and Garden Center from March 3 – April 16, 2017.
Having worked and lived together for 25 years, New Orleans-based artists David Sullivan and Courtney Egan’s aesthetics and themes crisscross with a concern for how technology is changing our experience of nature, of what the natural world is, and what its future holds. Sullivan’s animated, color-saturated landscapes deal with our civilization’s long-term impact on the landscape. Egan uses a variety of new-media methods and techniques, including computer coding, to explore the prevailing relationship between people, technology, and nature.
Between Nature & Technology featured recent works from the artists.
Antonia Adezio, executive director of the Marin Art & Garden Center, encountered this work at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art where it was shown in 2016. “Courtney and David are working with powerful themes and both artists use new media to connect the viewer with nature and their own concepts of beauty. The visitor will be immersed in their vision, which is thought-provoking and inspiring.” Flynn O’Brien, who curated the exhibition for SVMA, introduced the artists’ talk on March 3rd.
More about the artists:
David Sullivan’s three-dimensional animations paint a magnetic picture of an apocalyptic future. Interested in how industry affects our way of life, Sullivan’s landscapes are focused on the present and future of the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River areas. Sunset Refinery’s bright, pulsating colors keep the viewer entranced; while Fugitive Emissions, created during a residency at A Studio in the Woods near the Chalmette and Murphy Oil Refineries, keeps the viewer on edge with its ominous industrial soundtrack. This work was recently seen projected outdoors as part of the Digital Nature exhibition at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden.
Courtney Egan’s projection-based installations weave botanical art with sculpture and technology. Strongly inspired by the profusion of flora in New Orleans, where she has lived and worked since 1991, her work digitally manipulates the natural world, questioning how our perception of nature is altered by technology. Dreamcatchers, an interactive single-channel video installation that was also part of the Digital Nature exhibition in Los Angeles, coaxes night-blooming cereus to bloom and close, based on the viewer’s movement. An ephemeral bloom, inconvenient and hard to see, the flower is now at our beck and call. Courtney’s practice also includes filmmaking and curation of film programs. She was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute and at Louisiana Artworks in New Orleans and is a founding member of the arts collective Antenna Gallery. She holds an M.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art.
