The Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall will host two distinct but related exhibitions that engage with new media to explore themes surrounding sustainability and humankind’s impact on the environment.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 utilizes video, sound, and projection interacting with a pool of water in a darkened space to create an environment that feels as if its outside the usual flow of time and space. It transforms the gallery into a view of Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma, in Washington state framed from a contemplative distance and projected onto a viewing pool. The water is disturbed periodically, exploding the image into chaos before it settles back into tranquility. Mt. Rainier is an active stratovolcano, and the turmoil of the reflecting pool parallels the periodic violence of eruptions and speaks to the constant cycles of life and death found all around us.
Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination takes a more playful approach that eases visitors into thinking more deeply about human impact, unintended consequences, and the resiliency of non-human life. Working with new media and animation artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner’s installation is set in a not-so-distant future and offers viewers what seems at first to be a mostly barren, colorless landscape. Upon closer inspection, the experience shifts. The tree stumps are made of jewel-like glass sculptures which you can interact with through augmented reality (AR). The AR technology activates the stumps which suddenly sprout imaginative, bright, mythical flora that Ruffner describes as having adapted to their new environments.
Both works, individually, meditate on cycles of change and adaptability while still emphasizing the effects, often unintended, of human actions on the world. Combined, the two exhibitions offer the opportunity to see the ways that artists of different generations and backgrounds have chosen to engage with technology and new media as methods to explore the relationship among humans and the environment we live in.
For me, more personally, I find another important element of the juxtaposition of these two works is reflected in the ways they quietly ask us to think about how technology as an intervention might help or hinder (or both) our ability to connect with the environments we are embedded within, despite the fact that we often think of ourselves as outside of nature.
— Jessica Orzulak, Associate Curator and Curatorial Affairs Manager
Special Installations:
In addition to these exhibitions, there will be three Special Installations in the Museum that also participate to this conversation.
The Last Tree of the Forest and the Plastic Bottle by Edwin Salas Acosta | Immerse yourself in a poignant virtual reality (VR) short film that delves into environmental consciousness and the delicate balance of nature.
Located in the Digital Lounge, “The Last Chair of the Forest and the Plastic Bottle” transports viewers to the ancient Pisgah Forest, where the beauty of the last remaining tree is juxtaposed against the haunting presence of a plastic bottle. Watch trailer.
Forest Feels by Amanda N. Simons | “Forest Feels” invites viewers to participate in two distinct realities of an art museum experience: to observe the work as it is in this moment, and also to change the work by contributing to its evolution.
Located in the Wells Fargo Art PLAYce, viewers are invited to interact directly with the work, whether that means rearranging existing components, adding in new ones, or removing what is already there.
Sustainable Creativity: STEAM Workshop for Future Leaders | From September–October 2024, the Asheville Art Museum’s Learning & Engagement department is partnering with local non-profit OpenDoors Asheville to host an afterschool STEAM program for BIPOC high school students.
The program provides students the opportunity to create artwork exploring the themes of sustainability, environmental impact, climate change, and/or conservation in the world they live in. In conjunction, students will have a chance to express their personal identities and practice social emotional skills. Throughout the program, Blossman Companies Education Gallery will be updated to feature student work as it progresses over eight weeks. Blossman Gallery will open to the public later this Fall to feature the student artists’ work.
