ANTIDOTE TO NOISE:
FOUR VOICES

Curator's Essay

[ Excerpt ]

In the midst of a mounting crisis, reflection is difficult. But art can provide such meditation in an emergency (per Frank O’Hara). Some artists, such as these four, remind us that climate is not simply happening to us, but is us.

“Noise” does not fall only on the ear. The term refers to the production (and reception) of inchoate effect, extraneous to what we consider productive and sustaining. An antidote to noise (per the title given to an artwork in the exhibition) is not necessarily quietude, or even harmonious sound. It refers to a balancing of noise with “signal,” a clear stream of information that can be apprehended.

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Nature’s most evident representative in art is the landscape. Astrid Preston has addressed landscape themes throughout her career, and here presents some of her most abstracted interpretations of ecological space. Their coherent compositions and restrained palettes mirror the self-sustaining order of nature itself, a faceted portrayal of a phenomenon we inhabit but rarely and scarcely comprehend.....These artists regard that experience as fundamental to human awareness and to the human need to make art. Art is not an escape from noise — noise is not escapable, but it is counter-weighable. Rather, art is an alternative, perhaps palliative, to noise, a projection of human reason onto the seeming madness, and increasing violence, of nature. In this regard, art is longer than life, and nature is us.