| In the Art Gallery of Calgary’s exhibition New Green, what artist Lylian Klimek has described as a morphing of science fact and fiction is a wondrous sculpture garden, where 12 new species grow in anticipation of some yet undetermined future purpose.
Klimek was born in Humboldt, Saskatchewan and currently teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. She comments on the never-ending human activity of shaping and controlling our environment by creating transformative objects. Klimek’s work is a series of futuristic life forms that are a mélange of biology and computer programming.
Forward thinking, yet, as Klimek knows, the future is here. In the context of an era where bio-technology (or life sciences if you prefer) has given us genetically engineered corn and strains of wheat that can withstand near-freezing growing conditions, plants created through the assistance of computer software are upon us.
Minimalist in presentation, these plants and flowers could be viewed as benign entities, or conversely, sentinels of an epoch where technology has seduced the human race into believing that all of our problems can be corrected in a Petri dish or on a computer screen.
Klimek is not providing answers – merely prompting viewers to take the time to think about our evolution from the Industrial Age to an era of life sciences re-engineering.
What’s perhaps most fascinating about New Green is not how futuristic the objects are, but how it seems quite possible they could be found on the shelves of the local grocery store by next year’s growing season.
New Green continues at the Art Gallery of Calgary until September 3. For more information or gallery hours, visit www.artgallerycalgary.org. |
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