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Judy Natal: Future Perfect

Judy Natal Energy Plant Baby
Judy Natal, Energy Plant, from the series Future Perfect, 2011. ©Judy Natal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New exhibition invites us to imagine the landscapes of the future and consider our present moment and the environmental choices we have yet to make.

Toronto, ON, August 22, 2014Circuit Gallery presents Future Perfect, a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Judy Natal. The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes with a catalogue text by Timothy Morton.

In Future Perfect Judy Natal presents three peculiarly evocative and troubling sites where human intervention and land use are exploring the quality and state of futurity. A Las Vegas desert preserve that envisions a sustainable future; Biosphere 2’s experimental tracts in Oracle, Arizona, that research controlled eco-systems and space colonization; and Iceland’s geothermal landscapes are worlds apart from each other, but become, in Natal’s photographs, perfect foils to imagine what the landscapes of the future might look like, illuminating the present moment and the environmental choices we have yet to make.

The photographs establish unexpected but compelling resonances between these sites to distill and display our hopes, perceptions and misunderstandings of nature, and suggest both the potential and pitfalls of our future on earth. Natal describes how central nature can be to our lives, and how hopeful and confused we may be in using, recreating, and changing nature. While she envisions these areas as indications of our future, they are also touchingly poignant examinations of our current intentions, our limitations, our own fragility and ultimately human nature.


BIOS
Judy Natal is a Chicago-based artist, Professor of Photography, and Co-coordinator of the Graduate Program at Columbia College. She is the author of EarthWords (Light Work, 2004), and Neon Boneyard Las Vegas A-Z (Center for American Places, 2006). Her photographs are in the permanent public collections of the the Museum of Contemporary Art, California Museum of Photography, Center for Creative Photography, the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Her work has been exhibited at Projects International and Photograph Gallery in New York City, the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the São Paulo Biennal.

She has received numerous grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Travel Grant, Illinois Arts Council Photography Fellowships, Polaroid Grants and New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellowships. Natal has also been awarded numerous artist residencies nationally and internationally, most recently in Iceland and the Biosphere 2 for her current work Future Perfect 2040 • 2030 • 2020 • 2010.

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He gave the prestigious Wellek Lectures in Theory in 2014. He is the author of Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, forthcoming), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism and Critical Theory (Chicago, forthcoming), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), seven other books and 120 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, design and food.


Future Perfect runs August 28 through September 20 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA, with an Reception on Thursday, September 11, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (artist in attendance) and an Artist’s Talk on Saturday, September 13, 1 to 3:00 p.m. Both events will be in the gallery and are free and open to the public.


FUTURE PERFECT

JUDY NATAL

August 28 – September 20, 2014

Reception: Thursday September 11, 6-9 p.m.
Artist’s Talk: Saturday September 13, 1-3 p.m.

Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M6R 2G5
[ Google Map ]

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Judy Natal, Future Perfect
Judy Natal, Steam Portrait, Emergency Worker, from the series Future Perfect, 2011. ©Judy Natal
Judy Natal, Saguaro Armature
Judy Natal, Wrapped Saguaro, from the series Future Perfect, 2011. ©Judy Natal
Judy Natal, Plastic Curtain
Judy Natal, Plastic Curtain, from the series Future Perfect, 2011. ©Judy Natal

Visit Circuit Gallery for more information and to see more images:
www.circuitgallery.com/exhibitions


ABOUT CIRCUIT GALLERY
Circuit Gallery specializes in contemporary photography. Established in 2008 by Susana Reisman and Claire Sykes, the Toronto based commercial gallery represents both emerging and established Canadian and international artists.

Web: www.circuitgallery.com

Email: info@circuitgallery.com
Phone: 647-477-2487

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