SAN JOSE, CA.- The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art proudly presents Was and Is Not and Is to Come, a site-specific installation by internationally renowned artist Darren Waterston. An abstract narrative based on the theme of apocalypse, Was and Is Not and Is to Come will mark Waterston's largest site-specific project to date. His depiction will be played out across all the walls in the gallery, creating a continuous and cinematographic sweep. The viewer will be required to walk from one end of the gallery to the other and back again, in order to fully engage with the narrative. As Waterston describes it, the narrative will begin with "a fantastic nocturnal forest… which will then be disrupted by a beautiful and horrific deluge of detritus. The image will proceed from the ordered to the disordered, from harmony to disharmony, from accord to discord." The ICA Project Room will feature Waterston's sketches, small paintings and notes created in the development of Was and Is Not and Is to Come as well as reference and source materials.

The inspiration for much of Waterston's work comes from his in-depth investigations into such diverse areas as botany, Renaissance painting techniques, and both eastern and western religious and philosophical beliefs. Through his long standing interest in the genre of landscape painting, he explores the intersection of representation and abstraction. With a background in hyper-realist landscape, Waterston's most recent work explores the fantastic landscape, "leaving the natural world behind in order to create abstract, other-worldly spaces populated by non-representational forms..." In his most current projects he seeks to create visual narratives within large-scale or multi-panel abstract paintings.