Employing artificial materials to create simulations of nature, the 18 artists featured in UnNaturally explore the ways in which the boundaries between nature and culture are blurred. Works by Tim Hawkinson, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Roxy Paine, Marc Quinn and Francis Whitehead play on our nostalgia for an idealized pre-industrial past in which man and nature coexisted harmoniously in an unspoiled landscape--the same nostalgia that has given rise to constructed environments in malls, zoos and other themed "entertainment destinations" where nature is tamed and packaged for consumer use. Through an art of studied verisimilitude, impressive craftsmanship and occasional use of deadpan irony, the artists presented here suggest that the natural world can be reproduced with man-made materials just like any other mass-produced commercial product.
Essays: "Artists in the Garden" by Mary-Kay Lombino, curator; "Piper in the Woods" by Philip K. Dick; Foreword and acknowledgements by Judith Olch Richards
Featured artists: Chris Astley, Gregory Crewdson, Jacci Den Hartog, Allan deSouza, Keith Edmier, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Jason Middlebrook, Nicoletta Munroe, Roxy Paine, Michael Pierzynski, Marc Quinn, Michelle Segre, Alyson Shotz, Frances Whitehead, Clara Williams
Lombino, Mary-Kay, UnNaturally, Independent Curators International, New York, 2003. Softcover. ISBN: 0-916365-66-2
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