Smack Mellon is pleased to present two powerful and timely exhibitions featuring the work of Blane De St Croix and Carlos Motta. In the main gallery space, De St Croix’s hundred foot long installation draws our attention to the physical landscape of the Mexico/US border. While in the back project room, Motta’s video installation focuses on the influence of the US and its foreign policy on the Latin American population.

Blane De St Croix, Broken Landscape

The Broken Landscape project is based on recent travels along the entire Mexico/United States border. Research for the project involved traveling over 3,000 miles and exploring both the old and new federal fence still under construction. I visited 15 border crossings and spoke with people on both sides of the border communities (both in geography and ideology), including civilian residents, the fence contractors, US border patrol and journalists.

The Broken Landscape project reconstructs a selected section of this border as a monumental miniaturized section of the new fence and surrounding landscape. This sculpture for Smack Mellon’s gallery runs over eighty feet in length through the entire space climbing varying heights and slicing between the gallery’s columns and architectural space. The sculpture itself divides the space acting as a border or barrier for the viewer to be controlled by. Referencing the historical genre of landscape painting, Broken Landscape is a painstaking rendering of the land’s topography and its established border.

My work utilizes sculptural object, installation and drawing. Employing a combination of natural and industrial materials. I am interested in articulating humankind’s desire to take command over the earth—alluding to conflicts with ecology, politics, ourselves and the level of human absence and/or presence in industry. I often borrow from man-made elements and architectural environments and adjoin them with natural habitats, asking us to reflect on our precarious relationship with our surroundings.