Desiccated Capitol

Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio

Lauren Bon | Richard Nielsen | Tristan Duke

October 30, 2020 - FEBRUARY 20, 2021

CMay gallery is pleased to present Desiccated Capitol, a solo exhibition by Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio. A collaborative practice that includes artists Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen, and Tristan Duke. This is their first exhibition with the gallery.

In December of 2018 began the longest shutdown of the federal government in United States history.  At the center of the 35-day shutdown was a partisan dispute over funding for the US-Mexico border wall in the federal budget. 
 
Over the course of the impasse, Optics Division carried out an artist action, immersing a series of their mural-sized Liminal prints of the US Capitol Building in long, shallow reflecting pools.  As the shutdown continued, these giant photographs stewed in the swamp of their own decaying emulsion. Only when a budget for funding the government was finally passed, five weeks later, were the prints allowed to dry.  The resulting works trace a record of social/political breakdown.
 
These decayed capitols are a continuation of the Optics Division’s Desiccated body of work –inspired by the extreme environment of the Owen’s dry lakebed.  The desiccation process commemorates sites of distress while also, scar-like, suggesting possibilities for healing and transformation through trauma.

selected works

optics division of the metabolic studio

In 2010, artists Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen and Tristan Duke formed the Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio, devoted to recontextualizing photography as a land-based medium and a social practice. The Optics Division has explored the photochemical agency of the natural landscape: mining the material resources, such as silver, halogen salts, water, and gelatin to make photographic film.  In this work the optics division has sought a photography that is literally of the landscape. 

The Optics Division has also mined the social landscapes within which they have worked to find new modes of engaged photography.  Their Liminal Camera, a moveable, monumental camera built from a shipping container, functions as an image capture device and a social sculpture, which as a roving community forum allows for collective vision.

Exhibitions include: 59th Venice Biennale; Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA); DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA. Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MoCAD); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); Les Rencontres d'Arles, France; and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn, Washington DC.

For more information

info@cmaygallery.com
Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio
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