Dike Blair | Franklin Evans | Joy Garnett | Emilie Halpern | Katie Holten

Curated by Ingrid Chu

GREENER PASTURES, PERMANENT MIDNIGHT is a group exhibition that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installations by Dike Blair, Franklin Evans, Joy Garnett, Emilie Halpern, and Katie Holten, each of whom incorporate the effects of art history, the media, and world events, as well as drawing from their personal surroundings to visualize the contemporary landscape in ways that are fantastical, eco-conscious, subjective, and psychological in nature. Some derive source material appropriated from mainstream media and film, while others employ pseudo-scientific analysis as a methodology, or look toward natural phenomenon as a primary source, with many pieces formally manifesting as awkward or unwieldy objects. Where their works intersect is in how the “here and now” is conceived using a creative process that gives evidence of its material production. Perhaps as an attempt to make the sublime tangible, the artists in Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight bestow a sense of immediacy to their work not available to them through the perceived reality that their sources allude to. Theirs is a world that depicts a hazy outcome at best, even if their commentary is at times pointed and political. All of this portends to a crisis in observing the contemporary world that is inquisitive, hopeful, and at times, catastrophic in nature, and all of which belies a sense of urgency, not only in terms of the means through which these artists articulate the moment, but also in questioning their ability to do so.

Ingrid Chu is a Canadian curator and critic based in New York. Chu has organized numerous exhibitions, public projects, and special editions, and her writing has appeared in Afterall, frieze, and Parachute, among other international publications. In May 2007, Chu joined the Moti Hasson Gallery as the Director of Development and Special Projects.