Juliette Dumas
NO SAFE HARBOR
September 7 - October 2, 2016
The artist first solo exhibition. Dumas creates artworks that address our strained relationship with Nature. Dumas uses the physical properties of her materials and the dynamics of their interaction, to create metaphors for humanity’s struggle to control the effects of environmental degradation.
The exhibition presented a range of Dumas ephemeral installation involving water, plastic, and rocks (strategies of resistance); Horizon line); a series of silver gelatin works (frozen plates, Collaboration with the cold), large white canvases (The Erased paintings) and a wood sculpture (Whale Bone),
Installation view at Silas von Morisse gallery, Juliette Dumas, small erased painting, 2016
Dumas's work between 2013-2016, after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Villa Arson in Nice France, consisted of highly intellectual ephemeral installations that tried to sound the alarm about the environmental crisis on our planet.
Dumas realized that installing ephemeral installations triggered by an anxiety and responsibility for the planet did not help enough to bring a higher level of consciousness.
Installation view at Silas von Morisse gallery, Juliette Dumas, Erased Painting , 2016
Dumas is foremost a painter by formation. An important factor in her premise is that she subscribes to the “Rio Negro Manifesto” created in Brazil in 1978 by French art critic Pierre Restany while he travelled the Amazon river. The manifesto he wrote, with two other Brazilian artists, is all about “Art for Nature” and about raising Consciousness about Earth and the Natural World Through Art. In short, Dumas paintings are a study of the language of Nature, she is about raising consciousness.