Fruiting Bodies
A photograph display based on local and regional ecosystems and environmental histories.
The collages on display are based on local and regional ecosystems and environmental histories. By altering the photographs through collage, artist Martabel Wasserman asks us to look differently at the landscape we inhabit.
The images challenge the celebration of the monumental aspects of nature and instead highlight the relationship between the built and natural environments. The style of the work not only riffs on the history of landscape photography, but also that of psychedelia, both of which have deep roots in the Northern California landscape. Says Wasserman, "In my work I ask, what is the relationship between the landscape and the aesthetic innovations it co-produces with its inhabitants?" Fruiting Bodies are expansive mind-bending images rooted in the historical and present material realties of extraction and displacement. How can we imagine portals to new worlds based one the limitations of the one we inhabit?
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