Sunday, July 5, 2015

Spruce Gran Picea

 
Spruce Gran Picea #0909 – 11A07 (9,550 years old; Fulufjället, Sweden)

This 9,950-year-old tree is like a portrait of climate change. The mass of branches near the ground grew the same way for roughly 9,500 years, but the new, spindly trunk in the center is only 50 or so years old, caused by warming at the top of this mountain plateau in Western Sweden.

Rachel Sussman's work is equal parts art, science and philosophy, and with her images of 3,000-year-old lichen and 7,000-year-old trees, she draws poignant perspectives on the nature of time, life and humanity's place in it.

Sussman's work provides audiences with a way to understand ideas around deep time, and has served as a portal for connecting scientists from disparate disciplines, providing them with a platform to consider the intersections between their various specialties.

The artist has exhibited widely in solo and group shows at venues including the Berlin Botanical Museum, the Montalvo Arts Center, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the American Museum of Natural History. And this past April, University of Chicago Press published the monograph “The Oldest Living Things in the World“ You can read more about Sussman's work in her interview, view her work live at Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation in Brooklyn on September 13th, 2014, and see several of her images from her Oldest Living Things project in this gallery.

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