photo courtesy of Brooklyn Workshop Gallery
Jim Denney writes about his art and inspiration:
'The Ark glides by on grey silent, oily waters. In the foreground are white ghostly remnants of piers from a long gone industrial presence. A forest surrounding a glaciated peak from a time before humans were in the western hemisphere burns. Billowing plumes of smoke from a wildfire turn into choking brown clouds in front of a blue summer sky. The arks hull appears to be constructed of cedar boards like some ancient Phoenician warship. Its superstructure is a burnt ruin based on the skeletal charred remains of Pier D of the old New York Central railyard. Several years ago this Hudson River structure was determined a navigational hazard and was demolished. Most likely it was considered an eyesore to the residents of the Trump mega development, Riverside South.
The Ark is empty but in its earliest version it was filled with strange animals, a mutant Noah's Ark. After reading Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction I reconsidered. To welcome the Anthropocene, I replaced the cargo of animals with a cargo of ideas represented by the small paintings in the exhibit. These works are an amalgam of my thoughts concerning biology; environmental issues (specific to the Pacific Northwest temperate rain forests where I am from) wild land fires, structure fires, and history- both natural and cultural.
I spend each summer at the headwaters of the McKenzie River, a designated National Wild and Scenic River. It is ironic that my New York home and studio are a few blocks from the Gowanus canal, often cited as Americas most polluted waterway. Fly-fishing the Gowanus may be more psychologically challenging than the McKenzie, but there is the chance I may catch one of those strange creatures I had considered as cargo for the ark.'
The reception is free to the public, so make sure to stop by tonight.
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