Cal Poly University Art Gallery to Exhibit ‘New Nature’ by Mark Tribe Nov. 15 to Dec. 7

Artist talk and reception set for 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29
 
SAN LUIS OBISPO – Cal Poly’s University Art Gallery will present “New Nature,” a one-take, 24-hour-long video that captures a day and a night in the life of a wild place, by artist Mark Tribe to run Thursday, Nov. 15, to Friday, Dec. 7.
 
Tribe will give a talk about his work at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 29, in Room 149 of the Dexter Building (No. 34) on campus. A reception will follow at 6 p.m. in the gallery, located on the ground floor of the Dexter Building.

Shot in a single take on a stationary digital cinema camera, these pictures of Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest in New York are meant to be exhibited on large ultra-high-definition screens with immersive sound systems. 
Tribe is interested in the traditions of Western landscape painting and photography and how they are reflections of the ideologies that were prevalent in the societies that produced them. If, for example, the paintings of the Hudson River School and the frontier photographs of Carlton Watkins and his peers are expressions of the idea of manifest destiny, what kinds of landscape images might flow from the ideology of environmentalism in an age of climate change and mass extinction, as artists and society recognize that even the wildest places are being transformed by human impact.
“I am also thinking about the increasingly fuzzy boundary between reality and representation, particularly with the rise of technologies like first-person-shooter games and weaponized drones,” Tribe said. “I’m interested in simulations of nature that seem real and in representations of landscape that trouble the status of nature as something that exists beyond culture. In an age of virtual reality and inescapable human impact, is nature as real as it used to be? And how could we use technologies of simulation — including video — to preserve the experience of a vanishing wilderness?”
The University Art Gallery is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
 
Links
- University Art Gallery: www.artgallery.calpoly.edu/
- Art & Design Department: www.artdesign.calpoly.edu/ 
- College of Liberal Arts: www.cla.calpoly.edu/  
- Mark Tribe: www.marktribe.net/
 
About the Artist
Mark Tribe is an artist who works across media and forms, including painting, photography, installation, video and performance. His recent work explores the relationship between landscape and technology. He has had solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Momenta Art in New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, Australia; and DiverseWorks in Houston. He has received grants from Creative Capital and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is the author of two books, “The Port Huron Project: Reenactments of New Left Protest Speeches” and “New Media Art” (Taschen, 2006), along with numerous articles. Tribe is chair of the MFA Fine Arts Department at School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1996, he founded Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.
 
About the Cal Poly University Art Gallery
The University Art Gallery is a venue for helping to nurture creativity, empathy, innovation, design skills, storytelling, and big-picture thinking by bringing bold thinkers, emerging and established artists, and creative professionals to campus. Providing a venue for five exhibitions each academic year, the University Art Gallery serves Cal Poly and the surrounding area. The gallery showcases nationally and internationally known artists, as well as student, alumni and faculty artwork.
 
Photo information: Tribe.jpg — Video still of “New Nature” provided by the artist.

Contact: Garet Zook
805-756-1571; gzook@calpoly.edu

November 7, 2018