[URISP id=79097]
Marlys Kubicek’s “Going, Going, Gone” is a driven exhibition which addresses often heavy-handed subject matter with an incredible delicacy in technique.
The exhibit alternates, emphasizing at varying points natural beauty, a strict conflict between that and the artificial and a degradation of nature at the hands of mankind.
However, the exhibit never takes on any transcendentalist or ham-handed overtones. Instead Kubicek approaches the environment through a mode of logical and aesthetic justification. She works through her visuals to laud nature in its delicacy and organic form.
The textural haze of her collographs blend with the curves of natural forms in her most emotionally resonant depictions.
Because of this, “Carmina” was my favorite piece of the exhibit. The use of close colors only made the highlights even more dramatic, giving the intimate perspective of the composition an enticing depth.
In “la mariposa monarca” and “la mariposa monarca II” Kubicek depicts monarch butterflies. In this she demonstrates the fragility of nature, using a blend of delicate linework and a combination of texture and shading to give the butterflies’ wings an almost translucent quality.
She then uses her ability to convey fragility to showcase the destructive force of artificial structures on natural entities.
“Danaus plexippus” depicts a butterfly on a backing of gears, showing how out-of-place nature is once adopted into human structures through a visual contrast between the sharp lines and vibrant color of the background with the looser print and restricted grayscale of the butterfly.
We see this contrast turn into degradation in “Colony Collapse,” as the visual form of a bee is fading into yet another background of gears.
In “The Pollinators” we see the logical framework of Kubicek’s argument.
She accompanies it with a written commentary, commenting on the destructive force of man and citing information about nature’s benefit, such as the fact that “one out of three bites of food relied on the work of the honeybee.”
With this logical framework she includes her most direct critique of practices, framing beautiful depictions of animals with the manmade forces destroying them.
Against the subtle backdrop of the rest of the exhibit, this commentary stands out, but as a work it still maintains a visual delicacy, tying it into her more subtle distinctions.
All in all, the commentary resonates. “The Pollinators” does dip a bit too far into an almost literary rhetoric for my tastes, but the rest of the exhibit carried its argument entirely through visuals and context.
It is a feat, for instance, how the artist uses such deliberate and often deliberately artificial mediums as printing and collograph to carry a message about the relationship between the artificial and the natural.
I would recommend the exhibit to anyone interested in an intimate exploration of natural beauty and even more highly to anyone looking for a genuine, resonant commentary on a problem often lost in the mundanity of day-to-day life.
“Going, Going, Gone” is on display at Five15 Arts Gallery, at Fifth and Roosevelt streets, on Saturdays between 1 and 5 p.m. and by appointment.
Contact the columnist at csmannin@asu.edu.
