Only a stubborn few doubt that the world is facing potentially disastrous climate changes brought on at least in part by gas-guzzling cars, coal-fired power plants, rampant urban sprawl and humanity’s myriad other ecological interventions.
Indeed, an argument can be made that rescuing the planet looms as a far larger international issue than any other, so it is hardly surprising that more and more artists have taken notice and begun to act.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an almost dizzying cross-section of this burgeoning subsection of the international art world with examples by 51 individuals and collaborative groups in an exhibition titled “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change.”
While the bulk of the works can be seen at the museum, others are on view in 11 other locations in or near Boulder, including the Dairy Center for the Arts, University of Colorado at Boulder and several outdoor sites, such as the Boulder Creek Path and Central Park.
The show is surely one of the largest and most ambitious undertakings in the up-and-down history of this small, sometimes overlooked institution and one of the most provocative and significant offerings of the fall season in the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area.
It is also the centerpiece of this year’s edition of EcoArts, which continues through Oct. 6. The Boulder-centered multidisciplinary series consists of exhibits, performances, talks, tours and other offerings revolving around climate change and sustainability.
Besides addressing dozens of facets of environmental degradation and possible modes of renewal, “Weather Report” also raises fundamental questions about the nature of contemporary art and what elements any artwork needs to register with viewers.
In what has to be seen as a major coup, EcoArts and BMOCA managed to persuade Lucy Lippard, a legendary critic, curator and art historian, to organize this exhibition, which focuses on conceptual and public art, combining art, science and socio-political activism.
What that means is that viewers should expect to see virtually no painting or sculpture in any traditional sense of those terms. Instead, most of these selections are multimedia works that don’t easily fit any one category.
In many cases, what is on view is not really an artwork at all but documentation of a public artwork elsewhere, a previous performance or “community action” or some combination thereof.
A good example is a set of photographs, conceptual imagery and other artifacts relating to Agnes Denes’ “Tree Mountain” (1992-96), a patterned group of 11,000 trees planted by 11,000 people as part of a land reclamation project at the Pinzïo gravel pits near Ylöjärvi, Finland.
However necessary, such documentary displays are inherently problematic, because they provide only a fragmented, detached sense of the artwork they record, and they often look like more like something appropriate for a science center than an art museum.
While it is hard to knock the breadth of artistic approaches contained in this exhibition, there is nonetheless an underlying sameness that derives from Lippard’s desire to find works that “seemed better able to cope with the vast amount of information available.”
While great art should certainly convey basic, sometimes elusive truths about what it means to be human, should supplying information really be one of its primary tasks? Is it even the best medium suited to such a task?
“Working with and between disciplines and audiences,” Lippard writes of artists, “and given the chance to be considered outside the rather narrow world of art, they can offer visual jolts and subtle nudges to conventional knowledge.”
The trouble is that nearly all of this art appeals to the intellect. Yes, Chris Jordan manipulates words in pointedly witty ways in his digital imagery and Subhankar Banerjee’s breathtaking Arctic scenes of caribou and polar-bear dens tug at the emotions, but little of this work appeals to the heart or soul.
Morever, there is no work that offers a visceral kick to the gut, that immediately opens the viewer’s eyes and makes the dangers surrounding climate change seem immediate and real. Too many of these pieces require sometimes elaborate explanations before their point even becomes apparent.
There is no one iconic selection in which the essence of the exhibition’s message can be grasped in an instant of realization. And isn’t that what a great artwork does, crystallize some basic idea or emotion in a way that mere words are incapable of doing?
Perhaps coming closest is Mary Miss’ “Connect the Dots,” in which she has placed prominent blue dots on trees, fences, walls and other sites along Boulder Creek indicating the potential high-water mark during a flood. This simple, readily understood concept drives home the notion of humanity’s fundamental vulnerability to nature’s forces.
If “Weather Report” has shortcomings, the show nonetheless succeeds in provoking discussion, raising the visibility of a critical global challenge and giving viewers a chance to see a kind of vanguard, issue-oriented art that remains something of a rarity in this region.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached
at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Weather Report: Art and Climate Change”
ART EXHIBITION|Multimedia works addressing environmental issues by 51 artists from around the world|Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th St., Boulder|$5 general public, $4 students and seniors and free for members and children younger than 12|11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays in October, 11 a.m-5 p.m. Saturdays thereafter, and noon-3 p.m. Sundays; through Dec. 21; 303-443-2122 or .
