KATONAH, NY.- The Katonah Museum of Art is showing the exhibition SupraEnvironmental, including works by six contemporary artists manipulating forms from our everyday environment. In doing so, the artists prompt deep experiences of the actual and imaginative relationships that we have with our environment. SupraEnvironmental fills the main galleries of the museum and extend into the Sculpture Garden through January 24, 2016.

“The exhibition captures both the wonder and vulnerability of our ecosystem,” says Darsie Alexander, Executive Director of the Katonah Museum of Art. “Using materials salvaged from the remnants of the natural and constructed worlds, SupraEnvironmental exposes the powerful relationship between art and our everyday physical reality.”

Works on view range in material and sensibility, from tree bark, flattened and framed with lichens and fungi still apparent upon its topography, to bicycle tires intricately hand carved with Rococo-like patterns of fig leaves and fruit. Curated by independent curator Charlotte Cotton, the exhibition themes arrive at a time in which climate change increasingly grows in urgency and the search for raw materials and fossil fuels continue to define global relations. Working in installation, sculpture, and photography, the artists in the exhibition question preconceived notions as to what the function of such materials are, as well as how our environments may continue to evolve as human and nature continue their push-pull relationship for control.

Artworks distill natural forms or materials, such as a Cocos Nucifera tree hung in horizontal suspension in Henrik Håkansson’s Untitled (2006), shown for the first time in a museum setting, or Rodney Graham’s inverted tree photograph, which creates a metaphor for the various ways perception is skewed and reframed. Elsewhere, artists source man-made materials, as with Turner Prize-nominated artist Roger Hiorns idiosyncratic forms, pieced together from used machine parts, now purposeful only in their slow, sensuous excretion of pristine soap bubbles.

THE ARTISTS:
David Brooks (American, born 1975)
David Brooks lives and works in New York City. Solo projects include Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, NY), Socrates Sculpture Park (Long Island City, NY) and Desert Rooftops in New York City’s Times Square, a 5000 sq. ft. earthwork commissioned by the Art Production Fund. In 2016 the Aldrich Art Museum will feature a solo exhibition of Brooks’s sculpture.

Wim Delvoye (Belgian, born 1965)
Wim Delvoye lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. Solo exhibitions of Delvoye’s work have been presented in several museums, including The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia), Musée du Louvre (Paris, France), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels, Belgium), Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart Tasmania, Australia) and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (Kaohsiung, Taiwan.) Artworks by Delvoye are included in public collections worldwide.

Roger Hiorns (British, born 1975)
Roger Hiorns lives and works in London. He has been included at the Venice Biennale (2013),MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), Tate Modern (London, United Kingdom), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), among others. In 2009, Hiorns was nominated for the Turner Prize for his critically acclaimed work, Seizure. In 2011, Seizure was acquired by the Arts Council Collection and is currently on a ten-year loan for exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Yorkshire, England.

Rodney Graham (Canadian, born 1949)
Rodney Graham lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA), the Art Institute of Chicago (IL), Museu d’Art Contemporani (Barcelona, Spain) and the Musee D'Art Contemporain de Montreal (Canada). In 1997 Graham represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale. Graham has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Toronto (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis, Niedersächsiche Sparkassenstiftung, Germany (2006), and the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in visual arts, British Columbia (2011).

Henrik Håkansson (Swedish, born 1968)
Henrik Håkansson lives and works in Falkenberg, Sweden and Berlin, Germany. Recent solo exhibitions include the Modern Institute (Glasglow, UK), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, (Mexico City, MX), and Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, United Kingdom). In 2003 Håkansson participated in the São Paulo Biennial and the 50th Venice Biennale.

Nick Van Woert (American, born 1979)
Nick van Woert lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent exhibitions include Yvon Lambert (Paris), the French Institute Alliance Française (New York), and the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV. Van Woert has been a visiting artist at several institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), New York Studio School (New York, NY); and Kent State University (Kent, OH.)