September 10 – October 31, 2026
Opening reception:
Thursday, September 10, 2026
5:00 to 8:00 PM
Featured artists: Aziz + Cucher, Daniel Handal, Lori Nix/Kathleen Gerber, Michael Scandling, Olaf Otto Becker, Pia Paulina Guilmoth, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Robert Voit, Stacy Arezou Mehrfar, and Vija Celmins
CLAMP is pleased to present “Nature Represented and Reproduced,” a group exhibition exploring how contemporary artists document, alter, and interpret the natural world.
Nature has been the subject of photographic representation since the inception of the medium. In the early 19th century, pioneers like William Henry Fox Talbot utilized early contact printing methods to capture botanical specimens. By the 1860s, photographer Carleton Watkins traveled into remote areas such as Yosemite to document the majesty of the American West. And by the early 20th century, Ansel Adams firmly established nature as a powerful photographic subject and a tool for environmental conservation.
Taking these historical milestones as a point of departure, “Nature Represented and Reproduced” gathers contemporary artists who respond to the natural world across two distinct thematic approaches—direct representation and conceptual reproduction.
Direct Representations of Flora and Landscape
Half of the exhibition features artists who capture the natural world through a direct, deeply personal, or technically experimental lens:
Pipo Nguyen-duy presents historic cyanotype prints of botanical specimens captured in Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France.
Olaf Otto Becker documents the sublime but fragile Arctic landscape, showcasing large-format photographs of majestic icebergs in Ilulissat, Greenland.
Pia Paulina Guilmoth shoots deeply personal large-format photographs in the backwoods of rural Maine, finding beauty, sanctuary, and resistance through her perspective as a transgender woman.
Daniel Handal utilizes trompe l’oeil and visual tricks to challenge traditional notions of beauty by placing floral studies in unexpected, unconventional contexts.
Stacy Arezou Mehrfar explores hidden forest ecosystems across New England. Constructing kaleidoscopic images entirely in-camera using mirrors, color gels, and Plexiglas, her work blends childhood memory with technical experimentation.
Creative Alteration, Simulation, and Critique
The second part of the exhibition shifts toward artists who build upon more direct imagery, using physical alteration, digital construction, and fabrication to analyze modern man’s complicated relationship with nature.
Aziz + Cucher‘s series “Fleurice” features flowers frozen in ice, captured during 2020 and 2021 as a metaphor for the global suspension of life during the pandemic.
Vija Celmins translates found photographs from books and scientific journals into non-photographic artworks through a meticulous, slow, mark-making process.
Michael Scandling creates meditative, digitally constructed horizons of the Northern California sea and sky, transforming real-world observations into minimalist compositions of light and silence.
Robert Voit, inspired by Karl Blossfeldt’s 1928 botanical studies, playfully repurposes the obsessive indexicality of natural history images. His gorgeous close-up photographs of artificial plants highlight the tension between nature and its mass-produced simulacra, blurring the distinction between the natural and the social.
Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, an artistic collaborative duo, construct and photograph intricate, miniature dystopian dioramas. Blending science fiction with the aesthetic of the Sublime painters of the Hudson River School, their work offers a dark yet playful commentary on humanity’s dependence upon nature despite its willful destruction of the same.
For more information and images please contact Brian Paul Clamp, Director, or see www.clampart.com.