Justin Brice Guariglia
Responsibility
Statement
Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene
Norton Museum of Art
West Palm Beach, FL
September 5, 2017 – January 7, 2018
New Jersey-bred artist Justin Brice Guariglia (American, born 1974) became aware of subtle and some not-so-subtle shifts in land use while living and working as a photographer based in Asia in the 1990s and 2000s. Flying from assignment to assignment, Guariglia became intrigued and troubled by the topographic transformations that were occurring below. Graphic evidence of new agricultural methods and open-pit mining operations became far too abundant to ignore visually or intellectually. When given the opportunity in 2015 and 2016 to accompany teams of scientists affiliated with NASA on their flights over Greenland to study glacial and sea-ice changes, Guariglia became aware not only of the science of polar melt, but also its implications. He began to correlate the links between what he had seen in Asia with what he was photographing in Greenland. To him, both were emblematic of the slippage of the planet into what has now become widely-accepted as the Anthropocene epoch.
The aerial images Guariglia took of Asia and Greenland became the beginnings of the art that is featured in this exhibition. His intellectual and philosophical study of the Anthropocene coupled with his intense need to push the boundaries of photography resulted in his use of materials rarely associated with photography and his development of a new technology to render his images. Guariglia’s work is as much about making objects as it is about making images. His materials and the processes he uses contribute as much to the conceptual strength and cohesiveness of his art as do the abstracted landscapes that are at its core.