Ashes and Snow
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ashes and Snow by Canadian artist Gregory Colbert is an installation of photographic artworks, films, and narrative that describe the relationship between humanity and animals. The installation travels in the Nomadic Museum, a temporary structure built exclusively to house the works and which itself functions as the fourth element of the project.
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[edit] Description
The exhibition consists of more than fifty large-scale mixed media photographic artworks and three art films. The photographic artworks, each measuring approximately 3.5 by 2.5 meters (11.5 x 8.25 feet), were created using an encaustic process on handmade Japanese paper. The films include one 60-minute full-length 35mm film and two short “haiku” films. None of the photographic or film images have been digitally collaged or superimposed.[1]
The title Ashes and Snow is derived from the literary component of the exhibition—a fictional account of a man who, over the course of a yearlong journey, composes 365 letters to his wife. Fragments of the letters comprise the narration in the films. Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters by Gregory Colbert was first published in 2004.
Colbert originally conceived the idea for a sustainable traveling museum in 1999. He envisioned a structure that could easily be assembled and disassembled in each location and that would serve as the architectural component of the installation on its global journey.
The public debut of Ashes and Snow took place in 2002 at the Arsenale in Venice. Built in 1104, this 140,000 square-foot (13,000 square-meter) space inspired the architectural concepts of the Nomadic Museum, which debuted in New York in 2005. The first iteration of the Nomadic Museum utilized shipping containers stacked in a checkerboard pattern to create the exterior and interior walls. The most recent version of the Nomadic Museum was composed primarily of guadua bamboo.
After debuting in Venice in 2002, the exhibition has since opened in New York City, Santa Monica, Tokyo, and mostly recently, Mexico City, where after 100 days, attendance exceeded 8 million visitors. [2]
The exhibition is scheduled to open next in Brazil in late 2008.
[edit] Critical Acclaim
- "Spectacularly vacuous...an exercise in conspicuous narcissism."—New York Times (2005)[5]
- “The power of the images comes less from their formal beauty than from the way they envelop the viewer in their mood. . . .They are simply windows to a world in which silence and patience govern time.”—New York Times (2008)[6]
- “In these photographs . . . the animals and the people seem to move in a cosmic dance filled with rhythmic and visual beauty that breaks out of the mundane world of classifications, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and into the sublime.”—Camera Arts[7][8]
[edit] External links
- Ashes and Snow.com
- www.imdb.com [1]
[edit] References
- ^ The Globe and Mail: Canadian artist Gregory Colbert's photographs are the subject of a giant exhibit in Venice. And you probably haven't heard of him, writes SIMON HOUPT (2002–).
- ^ El Mañana: Acaba Museo Nómada su peregrinar (2008–).
- ^ Photo Magazine: Gregory Colbert La Révélation (Cover) (2005–).
- ^ Photo Magazine: Gregory Colbert La Révélation (Full Article) (2005–).
- ^ New York Timesreview of Ashes and Snow, March 12, 2005 When Nature Becomes a Looking Glass: A Tour Through the Exotic Elsewhere (2005–).
- ^ New York Times review of Ashes and Snow, May 23, 2008, Dances With Whales (2008–).
- ^ Camera Arts Review (Cover) (2005–).
- ^ Camera Arts Review (Full Article)(2005–).
