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Mother Nature on the run
ParkeHarrison at the DeCordova, Terry Winters at the Addison, GASP in Brookline
BY RANDI HOPKINS

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a really good artistic expression of concern for the future of Mother Earth. Some 30 years ago, movies tried to envision futuristic environmental apocalypse in films like the 1973 Soylent Green, which explored the outer limits of nutritional horror necessitated by an overpopulated earth. And Neil Young worried about seeing "Mother Nature on the run" in his 1970 song "After the Gold Rush." Now, high drama and environmental anxiety meet in the strange work of 33-year-old photographer Robert ParkeHarrison, who’s the subject of "Robert ParkeHarrison: The Architect’s Brother," which opens at the DeCordova Museum next Saturday.

Created in collaboration with his wife, Shana, ParkeHarrison’s work conjures a depleted and abandoned Earth of the future, its resources exhausted and its lands left uninhabited . . . with the exception of this one odd guy in a bad-fitting suit — call him "Everyman" — played by ParkeHarrison himself in the elaborate, staged set-ups that he and Shana create as the basis for their large-scale, black-and-white toned images. Each photograph takes roughly five weeks to create, in an involved process that begins with notes and drawings and library research and leads up to the fabrication of sets and props, an assortment of which will be on display at the DeCordova. "The Architect’s Brother" features 42 of ParkeHarrison’s images. It’s hard to describe the sympathy you begin to feel for this simple man, who’s so obviously under-equipped for the heroic feats he attempts. Whether working to patch holes in the sky or striving to construct a rain-making machine, in Everyman, ParkeHarrison has created a strange, monochromatic Willy Loman for the Apocalypse.

Counterpointing ParkeHarrison’s narrative impulse, "Luminous Forms: Abstractions in Color Photography," which also opens at the DeCordova on September 18, presents six photographers who look to their medium for their message. David Akiba, Bill Armstrong, Sandi Haber Fifield, Olivia Parker, Bonnie Porter, and Laura Wulf all see color, light, and form as the subject of their art, and each explores a different form of abstraction through the photographic process.

Nature’s forms and science’s patterns inform the art of renowned painter and printmaker Terry Winters, who evokes organic structures and scientific systems in beautiful work that remains rooted in the conceptual and æsthetic issues of putting marks on canvas or paper. "Terry Winters: Paintings, Drawings, Prints 1994–2004," opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art on September 18 with a decade-long survey of this fine artist’s output.

And there’s an exciting new blip on the contemporary cultural radar as Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard prepare to open Gallery Artists Studio Projects (GASP) in Brookline. This promising initiative introduces itself with a heartening statement that evokes the optimism of politically engaged generations past: "At GASP, we believe Art is a powerful tool that enriches, reflects, and propels change that affects human experience." GASP’s first exhibition, "Blurring Landscape", features work by six artists who do just that; it opens this Friday on Route 9 in Brookline.

"Robert ParkeHarrison: The Architect’s Brother" and "Luminous Forms: Abstractions in Color Photography" are at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, September 18 through January 2, with an opening reception on September 17 from 7 to 9 p.m.; call (781) 259-8355. "Terry Winters: Paintings, Drawings, Prints 1994–2004" is at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy in Andover, September 18 through January 2; call (978) 749-4015. "Blurring Landscape" is at GASP, 362 Boylston Street in Brookline, September 10 through October 22, with an opening reception on September 10 from 5 to 8 p.m.; contact info@g-a-s-p.net


Issue Date: September 10 - 16, 2004
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