FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - March 22, 2009

Contact: Lara Bank, info@seandspace.org; Roger Dickes, rdickes@glendale.edu

Let the Trees Decide

March 28th – May 2nd, 2009

Opening: Saturday, April 4th, 6-9pm

Artists: Frank Chang, Amy Green, Peter Kim, Sung Tae Kim, Patrick Marcoux, Jill Newman, Marjam Oskoui, John Rosewall

Organized by Roger Dickes and Lara Bank.

This show is as much about the imminence of spring as anything else.

The planning of ‘Let the Trees Decide’ began and continues forward as an open discussion about the viability of the title itself. Of concern in early discussions about this exhibition was the lack of knowledge whether trees experience cognition and the potential absurdity of asking plants to offer advice. Also troubling about the title was its implication that human decisions suffer inherent flaws, or that humanity might be in need of rescue from an inevitable apocalypse. In the absence of any framework for research into these matters, curators Lara Bank and Roger Dickes entertained the perhaps repressed notion that plants are conscious and that plant consciousness is sometimes or always rational and loving.

Beyond this, artwork was selected to clarify and expand ways in which the title could be dramatized, if taken as a celebration of plants or as a partial rejection of human choice. Works by Jill Newman (painting, watercolor), Peter Kim (painting), Patrick Marcoux (sculpture), and Sung Tae Kim (installation) vibrantly render flora in various phases, as defiant, outcast, endangered, or not-so-plainly alive. Works by Frank Chang (drawing), Amy Green (painting), John Rosewall (photogram), and Marjam Oskoui (painting), engage the phenomenon of decision-making itself, resulting from labor at its fringes, embodying the chance interplay between specific qualities.

It is the hope of the curators that ‘Let the Trees Decide’ makes visible the fragility of the categories established by its title, so that works within the show that begin through a depiction of nature will be seen in terms of choice, and that works within the show that address the concept of decision will evoke a sense of the natural.

Images (please click to enlarge)