The Cloud Library, Volume I

Elizabeth Holden Gallery

Curated by Eric Baden
Assistant Curator Kaylee Dunn

The Cloud Library, Volume I is an exhibition that explores photographic engagement with the sky and one of its more visually transformative elements, clouds. It considers how we envision our surroundings and how we construct meaning through systems of images.

The photographs of the earth and its atmosphere brought back from the late 1960’s space missions effected profound shifts in human awareness around our place in the universe, enabling a comprehension of wholeness and of interconnected and fluid systems. The works in the exhibition have emerged from this awareness and the ongoing development of imaging processes.

From Luigi Ghirri’s  encounter with the impossibility of representation to Daisuke Yokota’s process-based involvement with a world-in-flux; from Alexandra Germán’s personal tracking of the vaporous and ephemeral to Dennis Adams’ emotionally concretizing skyward visions; from James Bridle’s delve into data-driven uncertainties and Lev Manovich's visualizations of geotagged image sharing on social media, to Susan Schuppli’s observations of the undulations of environmental feedback and Harun Farocki’s notations on the development of representational computer-generated imagery; from Anton Kuster’s abstract configuration of systematic and incomprehensible human atrocities to Kate Fahey’s reconfiguration of the aerial visibilities of conflict and Chloë Bass’s shifting skies that embrace imagination and form the backdrop to our being.

In a world of ever-increasing imagery and information, these works invite us to cultivate our perceptions with unhurried attentiveness and to attend with renewed sensitivity to the conditions of our time.

EXHIBITION
Elizabeth Holden Gallery
701 Warren Wilson Road
Swannanoa, NC 28778

October 23–November 20, 2018

RECEPTION
Thursday November 1, 5:00–7:00PM
Holden Gallery

CURATOR'S TALK
Saturday, November 10, 1:00PM
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

The Cloud Library Research Station
Organized by Lydia See

An Instagram aggregate online exhibition of images which modify, demonstrate, confirm, or challenge our visual associations with "the cloud." It is a cloud-based, crowd-sourced examination of content examining "the cloud" (networked, internet-based sharing) as it intersects societal, romantic, and symbolic representations of the "cloud(s)." The Cloud Library Research Station invites participation and engagement, connecting image-makers through shared content, highlighting unseen connections across time and space. By utilizing "the cloud," the exhibition exists without walls and is perpetually dynamic.

Tag your cloud related pictures on Instagram at #thecloudlibraryresearchstation.