Staging Ground
Chris Gentile
Denise Kupferschmidt
Christina Leung
Christian Maychack
Jeffrey Tranchell
The Horticultural Society of New York
May 14 – June 4, 2010
Chris Gentile, End Times/Amend Times #1 (detail), 2008, C-print, ed. 1/5, 14 x 11 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery.
Staging Ground featured five emerging local artists: Chris Gentile, Denise Kupferschmidt, Christina Leung, Christian Maychack and Jeffrey Tranchell. Each work documented an intervention or manipulation with plants and landscapes. Installed on either side of the same wall, the work of Gentile and Maychack represents two different approaches to exhibiting plant-based sculptural works. Kupferschmidt and Leung use photography to document their interventions and actions within a landscape. Removed from any natural setting, Tranchell’s magazine collages play with how the "organic" is represented and perceived through commerce. The environment is not the main concern for the artists in Staging Ground, yet each challenges and experiments with the natural world, refusing to accept it at face value.