Landmines & Movement At The Dorsky 

Two new exhibitions went on display at The Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz on Feb. 8 that gracefully exemplify the responsive relationship between artists and the social, political and historical worlds. Titled “Movement” and “Landmines,” they feature work from Dawoud Bey, Christina Fernandez, Richard Mosse, Rick Silva and various artists from around the Hudson Valley  area whose art tells stories that ask as many questions as they answer.

What motivates someone to move from one place to another? How are people moved emotionally? What happens when motion is captured in a still image? The 18th iteration of the Hudson Valley Artists show, “Movement,” is an exploration of its title in every sense of the word. The exhibition was curated by Ransome, a self-described multimedia “image-maker” whose own work is featured in the museum’s permanent collection. For the exhibit, an open call was extended to local artists and what resulted is a display of diverse interpretations of one seemingly simple word. Anyone who enters the gallery is asked to confront movement emotionally, one piece using phrases like “racism,” “sexism” and “gay rights” to evoke visceral feelings from viewers. Then physically walking through the exhibit, the viewer is invited to move through the works themselves, the interactive elements making “Movement” particularly compelling. 

In the center of the room stands a 10-feet-tall structure, the “Glasshouse of New Americans” by Jill Enfield, which honors immigrants including Enfield’s own relatives, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939. The piece is covered with photographs of contemporary immigrants, each face a beacon of courage, humanity, shared struggle and possibility. “What’s wonderful about art is [that] it makes you think, especially if you slow down and [take time to] look at the work … What they’re saying visually is something that I think helps [the viewer] challenge [their] creativity and how [they] see things,” observed Ransome.

Across the hall in the Morgan Anderson and Greenberg Galleries lies “Landmines,” a collection of camera-based landscape work curated by Sophie Landres that serves as a reminder of the memory that land holds and its inextricable link to human history and industrialization. In perfect time with legislation that denies the urgency of the climate crisis, photojournalist Richard Mosse’s Broken Spectre series exposes the environmental damage that has occurred around the Amazon Basin, the source of about 20% of the world’s oxygen. Mosse utilized some of the same satellite technology usually enlisted to scope out locations for “clear[ing], dig[ging] into or dump[ing] waste,” a chilling dichotomy to what Mosse accomplishes by showing the destruction caused by those very actions. The images are almost unsettling to look at. They are vibrant and filled with color, but not because of lush greenery or waters running deep. Rather there are rainbows by a wooded stream caused by artificial oils, and bright yellows and browns on a plane where 100 years ago there might have stood a forest. As noted by Brian Willmont, the Dorsky’s communications manager, the exhibit as a whole is a desperate display that “[combines] beauty with the waste and destruction of our contemporary system of [environmental] resource management.”

As a “postscript” to “Landmines,” Erin Lee Antonak created “Provenance,” a multidimensional reminder that historical native narratives possess expansiveness beyond what can be perceived from archives and displays. There is an inherent responsibility that lies on the viewer to see an artwork and understand that it may be a catalyst of thought, but the story is seldom complete. 

Several public programs will take place at the Dorsky within the next few months, including a workshop and performance by Elizabeth Castagna, “Movement Drawing” involving a blindfold, chalk and live drawing on Mar. 29. “Landmines” will be on display until Jul. 13, and “Movement” until Apr. 6. For more information about “Landmines,” “Movement” and upcoming gallery events visit www.newpaltz.edu/museum.