Nancy Macko : Decompositions: Virtual Solo Exhibition
Decompositions, the series title, describes the process by which vegetable matter breaks down to make its nutrients available for other life forms. But the term also suggests how this work unsettles categories, taking them apart so that something new can emerge in their place. As both metaphor and reality, compost represents the principle of change and transformation.
-- Eleanor Heartney, Changing States and Gorgeous Decay
Nancy Macko | DECOMPOSITIONS | An Immersive Digital Experience and Gallery Exhibition
KTC Affiliated Artists is very pleased to present Decompositions, an exhibition of new work by photographer Nancy Macko. The exhibition is presented online in a virtual gallery space that can be accessed at https://bit.ly/ccpdecompositions. This is Macko’s second solo show with the gallery and runs through December 31, 2021. Self-described as an “eco-feminist” artist, Nancy Macko creates work that spans diverse media and investigates connections between nature, art, science, and technology. According to Macko, her work addresses life’s fundamental questions. “I photograph the process of the life and death of plants that serves as a metaphor of our brief existence.”
Her current show spotlights her Decompositions series in which composted scraps of organic waste suggest everything from mysterious landscapes and human anatomy to strange sea creatures and soft folds of fabric. In these photographs, light streaks through the compositions, muted slightly by a translucent film that gives the whole composition the soft patina of an old master painting. Macko presents death and decomposition not as a hard stop, but as a change of state. By using the photograph, traditionally a document of objective truth, Macko offers the viewer an experience of indeterminacy in capturing the transition of food waste from solid to liquid. Hybrid states are central to the visual allure of her mesmerizing photographs in which images hover between gestural abstraction and representation. Macko says she has come to think about her Decompositions series in terms suggested by Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, his alternative to the unitary fantasy of utopia. Heterotopias sow disorder, disrupting ordinary habits of thought and forcing us to re-evaluate our assumptions about reality. As heterotopias, Macko’s photographs operate on different levels. Decompositions is the process by which vegetable matter breaks down to make its nutrients available for other life forms. However, the term also points to how Macko’s work unsettles categories, taking them apart so that something new can emerge in their place. The compost in Macko’s photographs is both metaphor and reality, representing change and transformation in ways that are both beautiful and surprising.
An essay by Eleanor Heartney accompanies this exhibition.
Nancy Macko has had more than fifty solo exhibitions since the 1980s and has taken part in over 150 exhibitions nationally and abroad. Macko has had recent solo exhibitions at the Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, LA; Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Chicago Academy of Sciences, Chicago, IL; Pentacrest Museums, Iowa City, IA; and Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX. Forthcoming includes the Phillips Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA; Mayborn Museum, Waco, TX; and Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art, Midland, MI. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at EcoArt Space, Santa Fe, NM; the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA: and A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Her work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, UCLA Hammer, the RISD Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the New York Public Library. Macko holds the Mary W. Johnson Professorship in Teaching at Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she specializes in studio art, media studies, and gender and women’s studies.
KTC Affiliated Artists is very pleased to present Decompositions, an exhibition of new work by photographer Nancy Macko. The exhibition is presented online in a virtual gallery space that can be accessed at https://bit.ly/ccpdecompositions. This is Macko’s second solo show with the gallery and runs through December 31, 2021. Self-described as an “eco-feminist” artist, Nancy Macko creates work that spans diverse media and investigates connections between nature, art, science, and technology. According to Macko, her work addresses life’s fundamental questions. “I photograph the process of the life and death of plants that serves as a metaphor of our brief existence.”
Her current show spotlights her Decompositions series in which composted scraps of organic waste suggest everything from mysterious landscapes and human anatomy to strange sea creatures and soft folds of fabric. In these photographs, light streaks through the compositions, muted slightly by a translucent film that gives the whole composition the soft patina of an old master painting. Macko presents death and decomposition not as a hard stop, but as a change of state. By using the photograph, traditionally a document of objective truth, Macko offers the viewer an experience of indeterminacy in capturing the transition of food waste from solid to liquid. Hybrid states are central to the visual allure of her mesmerizing photographs in which images hover between gestural abstraction and representation. Macko says she has come to think
about her Decompositions series in terms suggested by Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, his alternative to the unitary fantasy of utopia. Heterotopias sow disorder,
disrupting ordinary habits of thought and forcing us to re-evaluate our assumptions about reality. As heterotopias, Macko’s photographs operate on different levels. Decompositions is the process by which vegetable matter breaks down to make its nutrients available for other life forms. However, the term also points to how Macko’s work unsettles categories, taking them apart so that something new can emerge in their place. The compost in Macko’s photographs is both metaphor and reality, representing change and transformation in ways that are both beautiful and surprising.
An essay by Eleanor Heartney accompanies this exhibition.
Nancy Macko has had more than fifty solo exhibitions since the 1980s and has taken part in over 150 exhibitions nationally and abroad. Macko has had recent solo exhibitions at the Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, LA; Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Chicago Academy of Sciences, Chicago, IL; Pentacrest Museums, Iowa City, IA; and Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX. Forthcoming includes the Phillips Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA; Mayborn Museum, Waco, TX; and Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art, Midland, MI. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at EcoArt Space, Santa Fe, NM; the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA: and A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Her work is included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, UCLA Hammer, the RISD Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the New York Public Library. Macko holds the Mary W. Johnson Professorship in Teaching at Scripps College in Claremont, CA where she specializes in studio art, media studies, and gender and women’s studies.