In Katrina and the Five Boroughs, Sean Slemon counters the misconception of the hurricane as a spectacle of chaos and disorder. Although a hurricane wrecks bedlam when it encounters land, it is caused by an extremely organized system formed from specific conditions that are far from casual.

Intrigued by the capricious nature of hurricanes, and of man, who seems incapable of learning from nature, Slemon, through his plywood installation, questions the identity of Katrina and the social disparities she revealed. His choice of plywood, a pedestrian material, references its use in constructing buildings all over the U.S., similar to the ones that shattered like matchsticks in the wake of Katrina. Slemon cuts the plywood sheets into islands that come together in a loose semblance of an abstracted aerial view of the hurricane’s currents as viewed from satellite images. Isolated forms gravitate around the central eye of the storm. Layers of the plywood, which vary in width and length, are stacked into small mountains, reflecting the depth and height of each area of precipitation. Slemon carves these forms to suggest the pauses and thrusts of a hurricane gathering speed, and a sense of unbridled motion charging through space. At points the rough hewn plywood is elevated from something humble and unwieldy, to a precious, delicate formal mass, evocative of sand-colored malachite.

Slemon is a joint winner of South Africa’s 2005 Sasol New Signatures Competition, and was presented with the Judges Award. He was awarded a commission for the first Spier Biennial in 2001 and served on the committee for Visual Arts Network of South Africa. He recently arrived from his homeland, South Africa, to complete an MFA at Pratt Institute.