Natural Wonders: The Sublime in Contemporary Art

The Brandywine River Museum of Art

June 23 to October 21, 2018

Suzanne Anker: Remote Sensing series (2013-2016). Plaster, pigment, resin, glass Petri dish, 4 x 4 x 2’’ each.

This summer the Brandywine River Museum of Art will present Natural Wonders: The Sublime in Contemporary Art, landmark exhibition featuring 13 major American artists whose work examines our relationship with nature—exploring both its beauty and its capacity to inspire awe and fear. Organized by the Brandywine with guest curator Suzanne Ramljak, Natural Wonders includes recent works by Suzanne Anker, Lauren Fensterstock, Patrick Jacobs, Maya Lin, Roxy Paine, Miljohn Ruperto & Ulrik Heltoft, Diana Thater, Jennifer Trask, Mark Tribe, Kathleen Vance, T.J. Wilcox, and Dustin Yellin, which will investigate the intersection between the natural and artificial realms and the wild and cultivated.

Through some 40 recent works, which often reflect the current anxiety and concern for the sustainability of the Earth’s resources, the artists raise questions about our strained relationship with the natural world: from species extinction, to the loss of open space, to the prevalence of GMOs and the increase in designer breeding of both plants and animals. Artists such as Maya Lin, Roxy Paine, Dustin Yellin and Diana Thater present works in the exhibition that engage with such ecological concerns, including the museum debut of Thater’s Road to Hana series, which captures in a multi-screen video wall the fantastical “painted forest” of rainbow eucalyptus on the Hawaiian island of Maui.