Erika Blumenfeld: Early Findings: Artifacts from The Polar Project    Sep 11 - Oct 24, 2009

Richard Levy Gallery, in participation with LAND/ART, is pleased to present Early Findings: Artifacts from The Polar Project, a solo exhibition of new work by Erika Blumenfeld. This exhibition takes an in-depth look at the sublime landscape of Antarctica, and includes photographs, video installations, and text from Blumenfeld’s essay “What is White”. This show seamlessly blends art, science, and the environment, and evokes a profound visceral experience of the Ice Continent.

In late January 2009, Erika Blumenfeld traveled to the Queen Maud Land area of Eastern Antarctica and lived for four weeks amidst the vast ice fields, luminous glaciers and ancient rock-mountains. Blumenfeld was given the rare opportunity to join the South African National Antarctica Program for their summer science season on the ice, and be the artist-in-residence of the research team ITASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation). Living between the SANAE base station, and her team’s 100% wind and solar powered mobile field base, called ICEPAC, Blumenfeld initiated her environment-focused series, The Polar Project.

Recalling the intricate renderings from nature that evolved from the extensive travels of naturalists and botanical illustrators during the time of the Renaissance, Blumenfeld’s new photographs and videos from Antarctica ask us to peer into nature’s infinite details and patterns. Interested in conserving the rare environment of the Arctic and Antarctica for future generations, Blumenfeld arrived back from the Ice Continent with a new understanding of her work’s intent. “I’m realizing more and more that, in all of my works, I’m really an ecologist and an archivist. I’m attempting to document and catalogue in order to preserve the natural phenomena I witness, and show its particular inherent beauty.”

Throughout her career, Erika Blumenfeld has woven her interest in light, physics, and the environment into her work. Known for her Light Recordings series, in which she methodically documents the subtle incremental changes that natural light makes over time, Blumenfeld’s new work continues to preserve the natural occurrences and inherent beauty of our world. Early Findings: Artifacts from The Polar Project brings us the rarely seen details and patterns of Antarctica’s ephemeral landscape.

Holding a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in New York, Erika Blumenfeld (b. 1971, USA) was the recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. Since 1994, the artist has exhibited her work extensively in the US and abroad including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe; Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art (CCNOA) in Brussels, Belgium; Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway; Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), in Portland, Oregon; UNM Art Museum in Albuquerque among countless others. Her work has also been featured in Art in America, ARTnews, and Camera Arts magazines as well as in more than six book publications. Blumenfeld currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas.

A reception for the artist will be held on October 3, from 6-8pm. Blumenfeld will be present to answer questions about her work. Early Findings: Artifacts from The Polar Project is powered by PNM Sky Blue: Wind Energy for New Mexico and is made possible by the generous support of Digital2You. For images and information about this exhibition please visit our website at www.levygallery.com.