PRIMA MATERIA: THE PERIODIC TABLE IN CONTEMPORARY ART

AT THE ALDRICH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART RIDGEFIELD, CONNECTICUT
FEBRUARY 5 THROUGH AUGUST 27, 2023

A review by Anthony M. Napoli

Alchemists termed the original materials that served them in their efforts to create the philosopher’s stone the prima materia. While on the surface linking a work of art to a specific chemical element, The Aldrich Museum’s exhibit PRIMA MATERIA: THE PERIODIC TABLE IN CONTEMPORARY ART explores the aesthetic and imaginative expression of twenty-four artists working with dozens of chemical elements, whether as the medium of choice for construction of an object, or as the basis for a social, political or environmental critique— or sometimes both. The exhibit was curated by independent curator and artist Richard Klein, the Aldrich’s former Exhibition Director.

A whimsical portrait of Dmitry Mendelev, considered the most successful refiner of the periodic table, brandishing a copy like Moses holding the stone tablets bearing the ten commandments (Mendelev as Moses, 2000) greets visitors to the exhibit. (The table currently includes 118 elements organized by atomic nuclear charge number and weight.) Along with Robert Williams’ visually complex assemblage of alchemical gear (Theatrum Chemicum Britanicum - The Alchemists Shack, 1998-2023), they set the stage for an engaging, diverse and wildly creative array of works, each featuring an element of science but, from the crucible of the artists’ imaginations, producing objects and images sometimes abstract, sometimes dreamlike, but always insightful. While each work is accompanied by its symbol from the periodic table, none of the works descend to the didactic.

Matthew Barney’s Bayhorse (2018) features a series of five copper etching plates, engraved wit and immersed in a copper electroplating bath. The works appeared in Barney’s 2018 multimedia project Redoubt. The electroplating forms organic-like deposits which progressively overtake the landscapes on each plate.

Exhibits include a series of photos that explore the subtext of resource extraction of many of these elements and their impact on the environment. Edward Burtynsky’s “Uranium Tailings #12 Elliot Lake, Ontario” (1995), “Nickel Tailings, Sudbury Ontario” (1996) and “Lithium Mines #2, Atacama, Chile (2017) make real the impact and aftermath of mining of resources essential to modern society on the health and ecology of Canadian and South American communities.

The diverse concepts - whether noble gases (Ashley Epps’ Gravitron 2022), carbon (Julian Charriere’s Pure Waste 2021, video of artificial diamonds created from exhaled carbon dioxide and bacteria, that are thrown into a Greenland ice crevice or the Dufala Brothers’ Anvil and iPhone carved from coal, 2021) or cobalt (Rachel Berwick’s mesmerizing orbs of cobalt glass.)

Coincidentally colliding with one of this summer’s blockbuster films, Bryan McGovern Wilson’s Oppenheimer’s Ghost (2022), portrays a replica of the iconic hat worn by Robert Oppenheimer, often credited aa the “father of the atomic bomb.” The hat is cast from uranium glass, illuminated by UV light, it fluoresces with an eerie green glow. (The excellent catalog mentions this work is part of a larger project entitled the “Atomic Priesthood.” Since buried nuclear waste remains dangerous for millennia, the U.S. government was concerned that thousands of years from now, language could change drastically and the knowledge lost and warning signs about where not to dig would be useless. One idea was to create a “priesthood” that would pass the information down for centuries/millennia on the dangers of atomic waste and how to avoid digging it up!)

Prima Materia, in combining scientific thought and artistic imagination, creates its own special alchemy.

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