An exhibit at Cambridge Arts’ Gallery 344, “New Landscapes,” is an ode to the tree in word and image.
Scientific photographs sit pretty next to quotes from famous writers, an approach that feels new but is inspired by György Kepes’ 1950s book, “The New Landscape in Art and Science.” That book was expansive in its subject matter and used images from telescopes and microscopes alike. In a review by Aperture, a critic shared how “a photograph of a chick embryo juxtaposed with an aerial photograph of Middle West farming land set this reviewer agog.”
The Cambridge Arts exhibit is more singular, highlighting mostly microscopic imagery of trees in a somewhat shameless but honest attempt to promote the work of the city’s Urban Forestry Division. QR codes advertise an urban forest master plan, and tree-planting internship opportunities are sprinkled throughout.
The photos go with quotes, but speak for themselves. Each could be a work of abstract art, depicting the sacred geometry inherent to plant life. A transverse section of root splays out like the rays of the sun; a Mary Oliver quote keeps it company. A close-up bleached and stained leaf displays a clean, jet-black map of its veins. Perhaps most stunning, a cross section of a twig is almost mandalalike, a perfectly irregular series of pockets and veins splayed around an oblong oval in the center.
The installation is tasteful, mirroring the understated beauty of the trees it celebrates. The photographs and accompanying short texts are hung from wire, printed onto simple, unframed pieces of paper.
In his book, Kepes used images to point at how scientific advances were alienating the general public from nature. That “new landscape” emerging from scientific knowledge, he argued, was inaccessible, and the way forward was to merge science with artistic thinking. We couldn’t understand the world through science alone. Rather, we needed thinkers skilled in the scientific and poetic.
Kepes founded MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies in 1967, pushing to humanize the sciences by infusing them with artistic sensibility. The center folded into the institute’s art department in 2009. If only it were still around.
It’s hard to know exactly where Kepes’ work ends and this exhibit begins, but a 1953 quote from Rachel Carson is suggestive of its point of view: “The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth,” she writes.
“For many years public-spirited citizens throughout the country have been working for the conservation of the natural resources, realizing their vital importance to the Nation. Apparently their hard-won progress is to be wiped out, as a politically minded Administration returns us to the dark ages of unrestrained exploitation and destruction.”
In a country whose federal administration is no longer concerned with its constituents, I’ll take a promotional exhibit or two from our local municipal governments.
Gallery 344 is on the second floor of City Hall Annex, 344 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge.
Share your own 150-word appreciation for a piece of visual art or art happening with photo to editor@cambridgeday.com with the subject line “Behold.”
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