Artists Get Outfitted for The ‘Urban Jungle'

Thirty thousand years ago, humans expressed their emotions and their views about the world by etching horse silhouettes on the walls of their caves and by molding tiny, voluptuous females out of limestone. Although Paleolithic humans may not have understood the notion of art in the same way as we do now, they predicted the course for its future. It's as if they proclaimed that art will always be involved with life and with the natural world.

The "Urban Jungle" exhibition, held in Fort Mason this weekend as part of the United Nations World Environment Day, showed that we have swapped positions with our ancestors. Whereas the art of the ancients focused on revering nature for its ability to give life and take it away, today we often have to be reminded of its importance. Put together by the Natural World Museum, "Urban Jungle" is an exhibition with an agenda of engaging the public with the environmental conservation, that is, reconnecting people with nature.

"Hold the Onions," a sculpture by Kerri Stephens, is especially poignant in revealing the return to nature as a way to link prehistoric and contemporary environmental art. Her bronze sculpture of a nude woman immediately brings to mind the heavy curves of its limestone predecessor from 30,000 BC, nicknamed the Venus of Willendorf. While the structure of their rounded bodies is strikingly similar, as it is meant to represent fertility, Stephens' figure is wearing a grotesque gas-mask on her disproportionately small head. The sculpture seems to ask, what sort of fertility can we expect of Mother Nature if she cannot breathe?

The artists of "Urban Jungle," chosen by the exhibition's curator, Yuri Psinakis, find different ways of motivating viewers to stop exploiting the planet. For instance, in "Megatransect," photographer Michael Nichols uses multimedia to document ecologist J. Michael Fay's journey across Africa, allowing visitors to experience the continent's hidden, largely untouched parts. Similarly, in his "America Natural" series, the Mexican photographer Antonio Vizcaino presents grand vistas of mesmerizing natural sights on the American continents. The color-saturated photographs of blooming deserts, shady canyons, and unspoiled parks are meant to inspire viewers to preserve nature's beauty. At the same time, these works do not bring anything new or distinctive to environmentalist art.

In "Cell Phones," a photograph by Chris Jordan, the message is more guilt-provoking. What from far away may seem like a mostly black canvas full of scattered, colorful brushstrokes, in the style of Jackson Pollock, turns out, when seen up close, to be a junkyard filled with discarded cell phones. Although cell phone culture is relatively new, Jordan captures its ephemeral nature in his portrayals of the appalling, amazing detritus of our consumption.

Yet, other works, like J.C. Didier's "Grandfather" and Nate Pagel's "Rainforest," offer something more than critical observations. Didier exhibits a 35-year-old plant, nicknamed "Grandfather," which is fully supported by human-made technology. The artist proposes that we should use our intelligence not only to selfishly prolong our own lives, but to care for other life forms. Supported by several tubes and a computer, Grandfather feels more like a fellow human being than an old household plant.

The piece that provides the strongest connection between us and nature is Nate Pagel's enveloping audiovisual installation, "Rainforest." Viewers are invited to relax under the large dome that functions like a curved movie screen which projects a video from the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. With rainforest plants hissing in the wind, exotic birds chirping unfamiliar melodies, and monkeys erratically jumping from one tree to another, the viewers are transported into another world. Completely under the spell of nature, everyone is silenced as vague memories of prehistoric times transform into dreams of uncontaminated future in which humankind lives hand in hand with its main muse-nature.

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