Vanish at RoCo

When Bleu Cease, Executive Director and Curator of the RochesterContemporary Art Center, initially told me about the concept for this exhibit, I was fascinated. The exhibit’s five artists explore loss and disappearance through different media, and the effect is overwhelming.

The first thing you see, entering the gallery, is Aaron Miller’s installation of decay – two armchairs and a footstool that look like they could have been in a fire, or would have been at home on a set of The Addams Family. It is "a chilling reminder of the relationships between fossil fuels, the environment, and domestic spaces." On the opposite wall, you’re faced with a powerful message, Dorene Quinn’s History, which she describes this way:

“I have heard the phrase ‘the wrong side of history’ repeated more and more frequently in political and social discourse. These words applied to climate change are prescient and we may have already entered into this ‘other side’ in which much of the damage cannot be reversed. History for now, is a human construct, and will cease when it is no longer recorded, although we can’t help imagining a story beyond us.”

That certainly puts things into perspective!

Passenger pigeon, extinct
in 1914, due to habitat
loss and overhunting

Falkland Island wolf, hunted to
extinction in 1876

Brandon Ballengee’s poignant series of historical prints, Framework of Absence, confronts the viewer with our current “biodiversity crisis, often referred to as the…Sixth great extinction. Species are disappearing at upwards of a thousand times the natural rate.” In response, Ballengee has gathered prints, dating as far back as 1585, of various now-extinct animals, and removed the image of the animal from the scene. He then burned the excised images and the cremated remains are displayed in little jars. Not only is the negative space in the prints haunting, but my initial reaction was – how could he defile a historical work of art this way, even for the sake of art? Upon further reflection, I wondered – how long can we humans continue to defile our planet before we ourselves become endangered?

The lab space hosts Meredith Davenport’s moving 8,817 Goodbyes, a selection of photos she took of dead bees from her urban beehive, which collapsed last October.

The exhibit’s weaving of environment, history, and art is extremely sobering. It runs until November 13. And if you go in the next week, you’ll be able to see Kevin Dartt’s outdoor installation What You Put In, a water-fountain representation of the Great Lakes, which the artist hopes will encourage us “not to abuse The Lakes and reminds us not to take fresh water for granted.”