Gaylor ‘flick’ is a first in show

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Robert Gaylor, still from Kamilo (Twisted Waters), 2010, video. Courtesy of the artist.

     (PNAN-NM) – Currently view at the New Mexico Museum of Art, “Kamilo” (Twisted Waters) is a video installation by Santa Fe artist Robert Gaylor. The video is the artist’s visual record of a growing environmental predicament facing our oceanic ecosystem. Filmed in Hawaii at the southernmost edge of The Big Island, Kamilo Beach lies within the path of the North Pacific Gyre, whose currents carry enormous amounts of plastic debris that washes ashore.

     “In August 2009 I traveled with my partner, Subi Bowden, to the Big Island and then by Jeep to Kamilo Beach, where enormous amounts of plastic flotsam collect from the North Pacific Gyre,” said Gaylor. “We were guided by Suzanne Frazer and Dean Otsuki of B-E-A-C-H in Honolulu, who specialize in cleaning beaches in the Hawaiian Islands. We collected and documented about 500 pounds of material, which I sent to Santa Fe via container ship and truck. In September 2010 we returned to shoot more video and collect material and I was intrigued not only with the flotsam objects themselves, but also with what they said collectively about the international industrial culture and its disregard for nature. The implications for the future of the ecosystem and for human civilization were tragically apparent even in the 1980s when I did my first work with beach flotsam.”

Bremner Benedict, Cedar Wash, 2002 (Courtesy of the artist)

     The installation also coincides with the opening of the “Earth Now: American Photographers and Environment” exhibition, which features photographs by landscape photographers Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, examining how they used their works of art in the service of environmental causes. Other photographers include images by Robert Adams, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Mark Klett, Richard Misrach and others. In addition, a highlight of the show will be images from new bodies of work by Subhankar Banerjee, Daniel Handal, Brad Temkin and Phil Underdown.

     For more information, see www.nmartmuseum.org.

About

     Since 1963, Robert Gaylor, who is an artist, industrial designer, arts administrator, including a visionary, has exhibited widely his works in film, video, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and installation. Her has founded and/or run various art non-profits in Santa Fe, including Center for Contemporary Arts, Rising Sun Media Arts, The Teen Project (now Warehouse 21), and Deep West Consortium. In 2004 he turned his attention back to his studio practice and has since developed various projects, including a larger multi-media project on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Execration of Beauty, of which the video Kamilo (Twisted Waters) is one facet.