Solvang’s unique Wildling Museum of Art & Nature has flung open its portals with the impressive summer exhibition Bio/Mass: Contemporary Meditations on Nature. Beyond the renewed pleasure of basking in a strong museum show, this selection turns out to be one of the most intriguing, materially diverse exhibitions in the museum’s history. It also fortifies the museum’s mission and illustrates inventively the symbiotic link laid out in the institution’s name and concept: “art and nature.”
Moving away from conventional representations of landscape, the work here finds nature informing art in various ways, including nature as fuel for abstraction. Nature is the girding foundation for such disparate work as Maria Rendón’s back-lit acrylic and flash on vellum abstractions, Karen Kitchel’s square oil paintings of spindly bunchgrass in Patagonia, and Sommer Roman’s sly sculptural conglomerations from reclaimed fabric scraps.
Sign up for Indy Today to receive fresh news from Independent.com, in your inbox, every morning.