Trace Artifice featuring Barry Underwood + Sarah Kabot

Cool Hunting, “Barry Underwood’s Luminescent Landscapes” June 6, 2013 by James Thorne:
“The exhibition, called "Trace Artifice," shows the artist at work again creating otherworldly light installations in remote spaces. From the forests of Vermont to ammunition storage bunkers in Wendover, Utah, Underwood has enhanced natural landscapes through night images that burst with light and color.”

Barry Underwood’s work is a reaction to a culture that believes it can manipulate the landscape to its whim. He re-envisions sublime natural landscapes, combining photographic processes with site-specific installations. The photographs that document these temporary incursions combine tones of sober reality with a child-like sense of wonder. Accidental and incidental light interact with a landscape, creating marks on film, and eventually, photographic paper. The lights disrupt the familiarity of a landscape and create a psychological space of unrest within a placid, serene scene.

Sarah Kabot’s work similarly undermines the presumed stability of a site. Rather than looking at the picturesque, she engages with spaces that are homely and familiar. The sculptures and installations she creates systematically replicate objects that exist at the periphery of attention – ceiling light fixtures, electrical outlets, window frames and the like. The recreations, installed near to their “real-life” forebears, create a glitch within the manufactured environment. For her installation at Johansson Projects, Kabot will work with photographs, spray paint and mylar, to create strange interpretations of the gallery architecture.