House Plant (2020) by Kris Waymire and Rhea Barve,
Ceramic and Metal Installation
PHREATIC! was the inaugural teaching exhibition of WetLab: an emerging art-science collective and curatorial laboratory at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Working within the bones of a domestic interior, nine interdisciplinary artists explored symbiotic ecologies and eruptive encounters. Delving into the worlds that live within other worlds, the artists investigated multispecies interactions and earthliness at points of disruption. The exhibition was housed within the New York Virtual Volcano Observatory. Like volcanic eruptions, the processes and cycles that the artists explored generate both destruction and renewal.
Brock Riggins and Taylor Burkhead explored contaminated and conflicted landscapes across ecological and cultural histories, while Annick Saralegui worked with microbes and the visual languages of bacterial pigments and DNA to convey climate crises and fermented ecologies. Aleyna Weitzner, Rhea Barve, and Kris Waymire presented works that illuminated the intimate homes within nests, shells, and other natural vessels. Jack Helfrich and Emma Waddell created sound art and interactive virtual landscapes to bring forward patterns of symbiosis. Eugenia Kisin curated a collection of Mount St. Helen souvenirs and ashware, tracing the legacies of an eruption distilled and circulated through household objects alongside an evolving art-science library.
Curatorial Statement by Ayaka Fujii and Ellie New
Curatorial Statement by Ayaka Fujii and Ellie New
Photos by Emma Comrie, Jaap Deinum, and Ayaka Fujii
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PHREATIC! art catalogue and publication in progress
forthcoming in 2022
forthcoming in 2022