On the cover:
Roland Persson, Animal from the Dream House (detail), 2023. Silicone, 150 x 55 x 120 cm. Photo: Noora Lehtovuori, Courtesy Ostrobothnian Museum in Vaasa, 2023
Editor’s Letter:
Nature is the perennial inspiration for artists, including those featured in this issue. However, what I detect in these efforts is something more like nostalgia for the natural. Consider Anya Gallaccio’s use, in her sculptural installations, of unstable materials like flowers, ice, and salt, which wither or melt. Lucila Sancineti, whose haunting works gesture at bodies and, especially, skins, frequently employs unspecified “biomaterials,” all of which call to mind a dimly remembered nature that was once healthier or more unified. Kishio Suga, a member of the Japanese Mono-ha movement, consistently pits the natural—sticks resting against a wall, straw rope, wood—against the artificial, as a way of examining, as he says, how “everything has meaning in its existence.” As he acknowledges, many of his sculptural installations “engage deeply with nature.” Still, none of the artists here tackles the melancholic nostalgia for nature more than Roland Persson, who produces, among other things, life-like casts of things like elephants and dying antelopes. Indeed, one such cast, a cactus with its roots growing out of various plastic containers, is called Remorse From Far Away. And, while Christopher McNulty, who received the ISC’s 2024 Educator Award, doesn’t always reference nature, he looks to its past as well as to its dark future in his use of wood stumps studded with staples, and even in his installation of car-exhaust markings on paper. —Daniel Kunitz, Editor-in-Chief
