January 13, 2025 – February 21, 2025

Friday, January 17, 6-9pm: Opening Reception & Salt Lake Gallery Stroll

Friday, February 21, 6-9pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll

BIODIVERGENT: Visual Meditations on a Diverse Natural World by Carel Brest van Kempen

Artist Statement

Don’t look at these paintings. Walk out the door and look up into the trees. Admire their shimmering leaves, each one a little solar panel collecting the energy needed to sustain life. Try to interpret the behavior of the birds in the canopy. Observe the insects that make their living on the bark’s surface. Turn over a rock or flip an old board (being careful to replace it as it was, afterwards) and marvel at the minute life forms in the soil beneath: supple worms, delicate arthropods, and the fine threads of fungi whose networks transfer water, nutrients and chemicals, regulating plant communities in ways we’re only beginning to understand and, along with bacteria, affecting soil gas exchange. These systems are microcosms of the global ecosystem that circulates nutrients and energy from one organism to another, shaping and adapting us all, its constituents. As Human impact on the natural world increases, our routine awareness of it and our active participation in its processes diminish. But whether it's visible to us or not, our lives are irrevocably dovetailed into the vibrating matrix of nature. Each organism, each component of that matrix provides a little window onto the grand ecological web that supports us all, and these paintings are just the results of my own ruminations on the subject.

Bio

Carel Brest van Kempen's artistic mission has always been to deepen awareness of the natural world and how it functions. He grew up in the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah, a land he has explored obsessively since childhood, trying to understand its ecology and how it’s changing over time. These studies have profoundly informed his paintings, the creation of which has been his full-time occupation since 1990. His detailed and carefully composed paintings reward close scrutiny, just as the natural world does. Brest van Kempen’s work has been exhibited on five continents, in venues including the Smithsonian, the British Museum and the National Museum of Taiwan. He has had solo exhibitions in twelve states, in venues including the Houston Museum of Natural History and the Chicago Academy of Science. He has been awarded the top honor given specifically for animal art, the Society of Animal Artists Award of Excellence, a record nine times, a record shared only with British Columbia’s Robert Bateman and Washington state’s Leo Osborne. In 2021, as part of the Thrive 125 project, the state of Utah commissioned him to create a painting illustrating some of the ecological changes the state has seen over 125 years of statehood. Brest van Kempen also does freelance natural science illustration and writes and blogs about natural history topics. He authored the book Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding and is currently working on a comprehensive field guide to the birds of Utah.

Christopher Lynn: Copper Ouroboros

 Artist Statement

Christopher Lynn began working on Copper Ouroboros in October of 2023 when visiting the Ringing Rocks near Butte, Montana. This unique geologic site houses rocks that ring like bells when struck, like a giant lithophone (a stone instrument). he collected the sounds of the ringing rocks over two days and categorized them by tone. He conducted additional research on the area and discovered the deep mining history of the region—in particular, the mining unions of the early twentieth century. Using the sounds of the Ringing Rocks, he recreated many of the union protest songs found in the songbook “New Songs for Butte Mining Camp” produced in 1917—the vibrations of stones being struck echo the conflicts between the workers, the industrialists, and the environment.

The legacy of mining in Butte extends to the present day. As mining operations industrialized, they shifted from underground mining to open pit mining, resulting in the Berkeley Pit on the north end of Butte. The Pit is no longer actively mined and was flooded to a depth of about 900 feet. The result of the water in the presence of the exposed stone and mining dregs is a highly acidic lake that has killed thousands of waterfowl and other animals. This is one of the largest Superfund sites—an Environmental Protection Agency project to clean up toxic areas.

The mine’s current owners placed watchers around the pit with shotguns used to scare wildlife away. They also employ lasers and sonic deterrents. Wailer, the central sound sculpture in Copper Ouroboros, is an interpretation of the sonic deterrents used at the Berkeley Pit, but rather than playing the sounds of distressed birds and alarms, Wailer plays the warning sounds of miner’s protest songs using the Ringing Rocks.

Accompanying paintings are created using imagery culled from Butte and the Berkeley Pit, referencing the mining culture, unionizing efforts, and environmental impact. All paintings are created using copper particulates and the copper oxide and sulfuric acid that are byproducts of harvesting the copper. The resulting ocher- and turquoise-colored inks will slowly degrade the cotton paper on which the paintings are situated.

Video art pieces in the exhibition pull together the histories of Butte while piecing together the sounds and visuals from the rest of the exhibition.

Bio

Christopher Lynn is a Utah-based artist, curator, writer, and educator. An associate professor of art, history, and theory at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, he received his BFA from BYU and his MFA from the Ohio State University. His work has been shown at Kunsthalle Below, Germany; CICA Museum, South Korea; Alfred University, NY; Mess Hall, Chicago; Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL (now Emerson Dorsch); BLK/MRKT, Los Angeles; Gallery 1988, Los Angeles; Hedge Gallery, Cleveland, OH; American Greetings, Cleveland, OH; the Rio Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT; North Art, Aukland, NZ; Thomas Nelson Community College’s Visual Art Gallery, Williamsburg, VA; and The Flat File, Salt Lake City, UT.