From Mike Mandel, one half of the dynamic duo (Larry Sultan) that brought you the seminal body of work Evidence, comes Zone Eleven…
“Over the past three of years I visited the various archives of Ansel Adams and viewed some 50,000 images with the intention of realizing a very different body of work that one might expect from the celebrated photographer. The book connects to Evidence in its design. But instead of images made by nameless photographers who were unknowingly documenting a dystopic, technological future, I’ve chosen unrecognized, even vernacular, images that were made by one of the most recognized nature photographers when he was working on assignment.” -Mike Mandel, on the upcoming release of Zone 11
And *WAIT* there’s more…. Stay tuned for a limited edition offering from Zone Eleven exclusively through RMG!
Cig Harvey Feautred in The Telegraph
'As she loses her senses, I take pictures for her': photography to console a dying friend
By The Telegraph
When Cig Harvey's friend was diagnosed with leukemia, she resolved to help her the best way she could – through her art
In 2017, my friend Mary is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She is 34 years old. She has a bone marrow transplant, lives in a bubble, and goes into remission. But the disease comes back.
As Mary’s world becomes more and more restricted, she texts and FaceTimes, asking me to send pictures. Each day I go out and make something to send her. Each day she asks me to send more.
It is late spring and then summer in Maine – glorious. As she loses her senses, I want her to experience them through my pictures. I finally feel useful.
There is precedence for being drawn to colour and nature when dying or surrounded by death. Josef Albers dedicated his last years to the study of colour, publishing Interaction of Color in his mid-70s. Derek Jarman wrote Chroma, a journal of his garden through colour, while dying of Aids.
On one visit to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I hang prisms in the window, and in the afternoon, for a brief 20 minutes when the sun moves between the two high-rises opposite her hospital bed, Mary’s room fills with rainbows. A gift of light. It becomes her favorite time of day.
5 6TH AVENUE WEST
For the past four months, American artist Mary Mattingly has been constructing a free public art installation at 5 6th Avenue West in Kalispell. Limnal Lacrimosa is a contemplative exhibition that celebrates the rich histories of the area, from the natural histories of the glaciers and lakes to the cultural histories of art and ceramics, and the economic importance of breweries in Kalispell before, during and after prohibition.
5 6th Avenue West was the original home of the Kalispell Malting and Brewing Company, founded in 1892 as the Kalispell Brewing Company. According to Montana beer historian Steve Lozar, prohibition caused the brewery to be creative: they malted their own grain onsite, made and sold assorted beverages.
When Mattingly was invited to visit 5 6th Avenue West, the roof was leaking from the winter snowpack and beams of light were streaming in through crevices in the roof. Pigeon feathers blanketed the floor and the mountains of Glacier National Park could be seen on the horizon through the old brewery’s windows. She describes it as unpredictably beautiful.
For Limnal Lacrimosa, rainwater is collected on the second floor and sent through tubing to recreate rain drops entering the building through the roof. The drips are collected in larchmatory vessels while the sounds of the droplets hitting the containers echo throughout the building. Eventually the vessels fill, water spills onto the floor, and the cycle repeats itself, inspired by Kōbō Abe’s novel Women in the Dunes and the sped up change of geological time in Glacier National Park with increasingly warming summers.
Over the course of the 9 month exhibition, the space will transform. Events include a vessel exchange where people are asked to bring their own vessels to be included temporarily in the exhibition (and then returned), as well as music and events that celebrate the history of the brewery.
Mattingly is known for her large-scale installations that address ecology like a mobile free public food forest on a barge in New York City and an education center for estuarial plants on the Thames in London. Her photographs and sculptures are represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York. She visited Kalispell for the first time in 2020.
MARY MATTINGLY IN THE NY TIMES
Outdoor Art, Summer 2021
By The New York Times
In post-lockdown New York, art has busted free from months of digital quarantine. Museums are open; objects are present, and people are pouring in — or at least queuing up for admission. The entrance line at the Met last weekend stretched across the plaza, and forward motion was slow. So, if you’re in need of a “live” art-fix fast — like, right now — you might consider another option: a self-guided tour of new outdoor art across town.
ELLES X PARIS PHOTO INTERVIEWS CIG HARVEY
NYT I THINGS TO DO
5 Things to Do This Weekend
By The New York Times
Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually and in person in New York City.
Mary Mattingly grew up in a rural community in New York that had no access to clean drinking water. With that in mind, the artist recently organized a yearlong virtual exhibition chronicling the creation of New York’s water supply system. In collaboration with More Art, she created a capstone project for this campaign, “Public Water,” a geodesic dome filled with water-filtering plants that operates like that system. Now at the Grand Army Plaza entrance of Prospect Park in Brooklyn through Sept. 7, the piece reveals what’s involved in providing millions of people with this natural resource, despite the environmental challenges that threaten it.
MARY MATTINGLY I ART BLOOMS
Art Blooms Alongside Nature in Riverside Park
By The New York Times
In an exhibition that sprawls across nearly 100 blocks of park, 24 contemporary artists address literal, metaphoric and poetic ideas of regrowth.
In Riverside Park, behind the locked bars of an Amtrak maintenance entrance near 108th Street, a large still-life painting of flowers leans against a wall. The canvas appears to be rotting and fraying into a tangle of dead roots and leaves, with new blossoms erupting three-dimensionally from the surface. The artist Valerie Hegarty wanted to blend fiction with fact: She imagined a Dutch Vanitas painting — a reminder of mortality — had been stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and hidden here, only to be abandoned when the pandemic struck.
BLUE VIOLET FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
New & Noteworthy Visual Books, From Queer Love to the Soul of a Nation
By The New York Times
Blue Violet, by Cig Harvey. (Monacelli, $60.) A British fine art photographer, Harvey celebrates the natural world through images, poems, diagrams — even recipes. This collection of her work is accompanied by text from Jacoba Urist, a journalist who covers art and architecture.
RICHARD FINKELSTEIN'S PHOTOGRAPHS FEATURED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
TOM HANKS: YOU SHOULD LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TULSA RACE MASSACRE
By The New York Times
I consider myself a lay historian who talks way too much at dinner parties, leading with questions like, “Do you know that the Erie Canal is the reason Manhattan became the economic center of America?” Some of the work I do is making historically based entertainment. Did you know our second president once defended in court British soldiers who fired on and killed colonial Bostonians — and got most of them off?
Opening events for Mary Mattingly's Public Water installation in Prospect Park
PUBLIC WATER A LARGE SCALE PUBLIC INSTALLATION BY ARTIST MARY MATTINGLY OPENING JUNE 3RD IN PROSPECT PARK
Join us on Thursday, June 3rd as we unveil the sculpture, a 10ft tall geodesic dome designed as a structural ecosystem covered in native plants that filter water in a gravity-fed system that mimics the geologic features of the watershed. Public Water is an active sculpture that follows A Year of Public Water, a timeline recounting the building of New York City’s drinking watershed. The sculpture draws from the minerals and geologic features of the watershed to filter water. Public Water brings attention to New York City’s drinking water system in order to build more reciprocal exchanges between people who live in New York City’s drinking watershed and its drinking-water users in the city, to promote care and commons.
Read more about the installation and opening here.