Exhibition Dates: May 21 - June 25, 2022
Artist’s Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 21 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm
jdc Fine Art is proud to present this gallery exhibition of photographs by contemporary artist Ian van Coller. Svalbard is a dramatic subject of rare beauty and complex history of human intervention. Situated midway between continental Norway and the North Pole, Svalbard is a gateway to the Arctic. The archipelago’s Arctic climate enjoys milder temperatures than other areas of the same latitude. Remote but not barren, Svalbard supports a unique ecosystem. Flora takes advantage of the midnight sun to compensate for polar night. It is a breeding ground for many seabirds. It is home to polar bears, reindeer, arctic fox, whale, walrus, among other species. Proximity to Europe made such resources easy targets for extraction. The islands were used as a base by whalers, who came in search of blubber; hunters who came for furs; and miners who came for coal.
Ian van Coller’s work depicts the traces and tragedies Svalbard’s history of human intervention set against an awe-inspiring backdrop that engage every aspect of the sublime. These photographs are beautiful and, in harmony with the great tradition of the landscape genre, even a bit terrifying. A symphony of color dances on snowcapped peaks that plunge into smooth yet rippled waters. The environment itself is a living chronicle. Remains of human activity are everywhere- littering and interrupting place as much as disappearing, crumbling-back into a time before the time before. We feel the trespasses of humans and the slow degradation of time in the remains of our abandoned industries. In the face of such aged ice we may experience the weight of deep time and the flash of an instant it took in contrast for humans to pillage nature’s abundance.
About the photographs in this gallery exhibition:
Ian van Coller made these photographs of Svalbard in 2019 while on an Arctic Circle Artist’s Residency. In recent years, van Coller has dedicated his work to the subject of deep time and climate change, best represented through glacier-loss. His work on such subjects earned him a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. His travels frequently find him in the Antarctic and Arctic (though he has also documented “tropical glaciers” in Peru and Tanzania). Polar-environments are experiencing planetary warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet and thus become a special focus of the Artist’s work.
Related Programming Presented by the Sika Center for Art & Ecology
Spring Keynote: Ian van Coller
Tuesday, May 17, 2022 | 4PM PST
Free Zoom Keynote Event