Extinct in the Wild is Courtney Egan’s fourth exhibition with the gallery. The installation features multiple distinct projection-based works that meld technology with nature. Egan creates time-lapse botanical still-life work by taking a series of photographs that are compiled into films and composited with physical elements. With this process, she can create “impossible arrangements.”
Over the last two years, while producing the body of work on view at the gallery, Egan has worked with local native plant groups to gain a deeper understanding of local plant life and ecologies. The recent focus on natural plants has changed how she observes the ecology around her and has brought the plants into focus. She states, “I work to see and experience the plant world as the equal cohort to the human world, instead of a backdrop to a human stage.”
Egan uses technology to help the viewer experience the natural world. She sees the growing frequency of human exposure to nature via screens and addresses the dichotomy. She uses electrically-powered, environmentally toxic tools and their implications underline a contradiction, of which the resulting artwork is a record: the same tools that allow us to more deeply sense the world, also cause ecosystem harm. Most media-based experiences of the world are enjoyable and illuminating, yet disturbing and ethically challenging at the same time. Recognizing the contradiction and looking for ways to create within this awareness occupy an evolving part of her practice.
