DAVID J. WAGNER, L.L.C.

David Wagner’s exhibition "Environmental Impact" represents a new level of broad yet focused appreciation for the sheer power, promise, and impact of art on the wisdom and sensibilities of current environmental crises. And crises they are. The myriad of artists, media and subject matter encompassed in the exhibition combine to convey a remarkable testimony to the urgency, persuasiveness and abundance of insights, perspectives, and power of art. "Environmental Impact" is packed not with empty mantras to a better state of being for the planet and all that dwell therein, or a blind and grasping homage to the beauty of life itself, but with deeply personal statements that range from lyrical epiphanies to thoroughgoing activist expressionism; from figurative paroxysm to surreal data–crunching.

Viewers of "Environmental Impact" will experience the beauty, the turmoil, the levels of ambiguity and mixed message, but may also feel unexpected pangs of hope, even pragmatic responses to environmental concern and outright disaster.

Take one clear example, that serves as a fitting emblem for the exhibition: the lead painting, by famed Canadian artist Robert Bateman, entitled "Carmanah Contrast". The Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park in British Columbia has been much celebrated for its huge Sitka Spruce, one of which is over a thousand years old and 314 feet high, amid a misty coast range of temperate rain–forest like luxuriance. This park was created as recently as 1990, following outpourings of protests by locals over clear–cutting that had been occurring in the area for years. Bateman’s painting shows both sides of the story: the Creation, and human desecration.

In similar veins, Pieter Breugel showed, in his "Dark Day" and "Hunters in the Snow" (both painted in 1565) barren wintry trees populated by ravens, hunters and their dogs stalking game below, stormy peaks, frozen congeries of the human presence, suggesting a tenebrous looming angst symptomatic of our species’ presence in all directions. But at least the trees remained standing. . . . Click here to continue.