August 6, 2008

The Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) will present Chris Drury: Mushrooms | Clouds —the first major museum exhibition in the United States by British artist Chris Drury. On exhibit through Oct. 5, the feature exhibition includes paintings, prints, sculpture and video drawn from two of Drury’s most notable ongoing series: Mushrooms and Clouds. The exhibition also includes new works produced in partnership with the FOR-SITE Foundation in Nevada City, Calif. and the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nev. The new work created for Mushrooms | Clouds also refers to the complex legacy—and continued presence—of nuclear activity in the American West.

“Mushrooms | Clouds is an exhibition that embraces metaphor and analogy as tools for layering multiple meanings within the objects Chris Drury creates,” said Ann Wolfe, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Nevada Museum of Art. “From mushroom spore prints to a sculpture in the form of a nuclear mushroom cloud, and videos that explore the cloud-like properties of water and smoke, Drury makes visible the subtle connections between the realms of science, culture, politics, and the history of place.”

One of Great Britain’s most prolific and respected artists, Drury explores conceptual issues arising from the interplay between nature and culture. Often associated with the Land Art and/or Earth Art movements, and artists such as Patrick Dougherty, Andy Goldsworthy, and Richard Long, Drury distinguishes his art-making practices through his ongoing commitment to examining the inner nature of human consciousness and its relationship to the outer nature of the material world.

Cloud Pool Chamber
Commissioned in collaboration with the FOR-SITE Foundation, Nevada City, Calif.
With support from the FOR-SITE Foundation, Drury constructed a wooden cloud chamber in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Cloud Pool Chamber is made from diseased logs felled at Donner Memorial State Park near Truckee, Calif. A hand-carved granite pool beneath the structure reflects the clouds overhead and refers to the Native Maidu grinding stones located nearby. This large-scale sculpture has been reconstructed for exhibit within the Nightingale Rooftop Sculpture Gallery, where guests can enter the structure and observe the clouds passing overhead.

Life in a Field of Death and 559 Shelter Stones
Commissioned in collaboration with the Desert Research Institute, Reno and Las Vegas, Nev.
With cooperation from scientists at the Desert Research Institute, Life in a Field of Death translates the genetic code of a living organism found in soil gathered from the Nevada Test Site, one of the most abused nuclear landscapes in the world. DRI scientists located a DNA sample from the bacterium and then extrapolated its gene sequence. Drury interpreted a cyanobacterium known as Microcoleus – the bacterium commonly found in lichen. Life in the Field of Death is a series of stenciled letters of the Mircocoleus gene sequence installed on the entire 65 foot, torqued west wall of the NMA’s Feature Gallery. The piece will be affixed onto the wall’s surface using soil pigments gathered at the test site.