FOR EMIDIATE RELEASE

Water Lines

Linnéa Gad

Tyler Healy

Mikael Levin

Katia Read

 Saturday, October 15 – Sunday, November 20, 2022

MARQUEE PROJECTS is pleased to present our next group exhibition titled Water Lines, featuring photographs, paintings and sculptures by Linnéa Gad, Tyler Healy, Mikael Levin and Katia Read.

A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, October 15, from 5 - 7pm.

Many people wish their ashes to be scattered in the ocean, craving a metaphorical and physical return to the source of all things, the universal solvent. When Juliet proclaims to Romeo, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep,” we fundamentally understand comparing the oceanic vastness of three-fourths of our planet to our own inner depths. Artists plumb those depths and bring back the treasures they find, and when the subject is our relationship to the natural world and today’s environmental crises, the results can be profound. 

The artists in Water Lines engage diverse processes and materials to express their visions, but all aspire to provoke discussions concerning existential issues facing our species. These dialogues can be thought of in terms of far-ranging delineations: the line between widespread flooding and widespread drought; the line between the habitable and uninhabitable; the line between climate catastrophe and sustainable life; the line between harmony and disharmony. These artists reveal the lines we come up against every day and, in particular, those we cannot cross. 

Linnéa Gad’s materials include limestone, oysters, cardboard, bark, and other found shell materials. Her work extends across sculpture, printmaking, and installation to create unexpected conversations that awaken empathy for the ongoing vibrant “lives” of these materials. Gad’s approach to the climate crisis is to make tactile responses as counterpoints to the theoretical and abstract visualizations of this global issue.

Tyler Healy’s work examines the delicate and often fraught relationships between society and the deteriorating environments in which they exist – especially referencing the dichotomy between nature and its function in American history and identity. Drawing on modes of production and circulation that define our era, including digitization, outsourcing, and globalization, Healy invites viewers to consider the cultural tensions embedded in the everyday objects and symbols we share.

Mikael Levin photographs are often of commonplace, everyday sites that, while seemingly insignificant in themselves, explore our conceptions of place, identity, and temporality. In the landscape photographs in this exhibit, it is hard to distinguish between the constructed (landscape) and the natural (nature). 

Katia Read’s sculptures reference her work in shellfish restoration with Friends of Bellport Bay (FoBB). These structures are an attempt to capture and create the movement, fragility, and friction of the Bay’s environment; the myriad of textures, spirit and romance of nature. Several forms serve as studies to create habitat for marine species. Her work addresses the threat to the Bay’s ecosystem, embraces objects that have a direct physical relationship to it, and can actually live there, submerged.