A bit of science fiction, realism in concurrent exhibits by UB art professors

For the first time in two decades, UB art professors Stephanie Rothenberg and Joan Linder are showing their artworks in side-by-side exhibitions at the Buffalo Arts Studio.

The shows, on view through Nov. 9 at the Buffalo Arts Studio, 2495 Main St., Suite 500, are part of the Waterfront View Series funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.

“As colleagues, the conversation between our work has grown over the years, and it is exciting to find parallel interests expressed through different mediums,” Linder says.

“The art projects dialogue with each other about environmental issues in a multitude of conceptual and material ways,” Rothenberg adds.

Rothenberg’s installation, “Aquadisia,” is a multimedia, science-fiction installation that plays on the myth of the oyster as an aphrodisiac and focuses on the desire to be more sustainable. Through video, sculpture and performance, Rothenberg calls into question human behavior and the ethics around our environmental solutions.

Rothenberg references her involvement in the Billion Oyster Project, whose goal is to re-populate New York harbor with oysters in an effort to naturally filter the polluted water. “Aquadisia” utilizes a glowing purple installation to create a futuristic, techno-utopian lounge, where Rothenberg introduces a new breed of oyster that converts toxic water into a drinkable “cure-all.” She takes on speculative design asking what could happen if humans drink filtered water from bioengineered oysters.

“There’s the whole myth of oysters acting as aphrodisiacs, but what if they created a different kind of effect in the human body?” she asks. “What if it made us more sentient? Maybe that would make us more perceptive to the environment around us, and if we’re more sentient as humans, then maybe we would be more empathetic to other-than-human considerations, curbing our tendencies to live extractive lives and damage the environment.”

The multimedia installation engages robotic oysters, animation and video to question our human cultural value systems.

“Biotechnology and engineering organisms are skewed for human benefit. In ‘Aquadisia,’ oysters are ‘engin-through-video-eered’ to filter water for the benefit of all creatures,” Rothenberg explains.

Environmental and engineering themes also tie the two exhibits together. For Rothenberg, it’s looking critically at the intersection of biotechnology and consumer culture. For Linder, it’s a close look at e-commerce infrastructure in Western New York. For this exhibition, she made drawings and videos of crypto-mining warehouses, cloud computing server farms, fulfillment centers and their surrounding neighborhoods.

Linder, whose art often focuses on quotidian consumption, points out that each box she created carries marks that trace and reflect their material history, from supply chain to fulfillment center to user.

Linder’s “Fulfillment” highlights the old American Axle building, an industrial site that houses crypto-mining, as well as the Kelly Gardens municipal housing complex across the street, where people currently live.

According to Linder — who sat in her car across from the old American Axle building to sketch the landscape featured in the installation — there’s a constant buzzing from the cryptocurrency operations inside that can be heard outside at all times of day and night, which further influenced her development of the project.

“I’m sitting in my car working on these drawings over multiple years, through different seasons, and just kind of bearing witness,” Linder says.

“Fulfillment” also includes a haphazard pile of Amazon boxes — each handmade paper reproductions of discarded Amazon shipping boxes. These paper sculptures are made using ink, paint and watercolor on archival cotton paper, creating a near-perfect illusion in these life-size replicas of the actual objects.

“I was thinking about the back end of screen culture and how it’s not just the box that comes to your house from one-click purchases,” Linder explains. “The machinery of e-commerce also includes data and fulfillment centers, and this show focuses on these kinds of sites right here in Buffalo.”

In “Fulfillment,” Linder focuses her eyes on the environmental and resource-heavy costs associated with our digital behaviors.

“You just click, and then there’s the delivery truck and a box at your door. You might not think about the mechanisms behind how it got there. Looking at what is often overlooked, or hidden in plain sight, has been a recurring theme in my work,” she says.

“We are so pleased to be able share information about our exhibitions with the broader UB community.”