Art News

Lehman College Art Gallery Shows a Selection of Work by 21 Contemporary Artists

BRONX, NY.- Nature, Once Removed: The (Un)Natural World in Contemporary Drawing presents a selection of work by 21 contemporary artists who use drawing to explore our alienated relationship to nature, creating oblique narratives inflected with irony, anxiety, grotesquerie and satire. Much of the stylization of plants, animals and geological forms in the show bears the influence of popular culture, demonstrating the degree to which our contemporary conception of the natural world has been shaped by cartoons and advertising. The work in the show varies significantly in its treatment of the theme, alternately mythic (Huey, Saul), abstract (Crump, Herrera, Taylor), fantastic (Fueki, Hancock, Karpov, Ulivo), political (Esquivel, Piehl), nostalgic (Barrett, Panter), pessimistic (Di Genova, Hoving), deadpan (Brown, Patch) and wryly funny (De Los Angeles, Johnston, Peterson, Wesley). A variety of formal and technical means are on display, including woodburning, bravura brushwork, meticu