An Apocalyptic State of Mind

The apocalypse and its aftermath have been a recurring theme in art for thousands of years. There is something satisfyingly narcissistic, hopeful even, in believing that our time has been chosen for the End of Days. And the New Museum’s pseudo-apocalyptic exhibition “After Nature,” which opens to the public today on its third floor, puts a contemporary twist on an old theme.You will not see any Last Judgment tympana, accounts of the Deluge, or Dürer’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in this show — although you will encounter, in Maurizio Cattelan’s “Untitled” (2007), a taxidermied, flying, runaway horse, with its head tragicomically thrust through a gallery wall. Yet areas of “After Nature,” which is as much a fictionalized curatorial meditation as it is an art exhibit, do suggest that the apocalypse may already be in motion; that, if you look closely enough, you will notice that already “the sun became black, like a haircloth sack,” and that “the entire moon became like blood.”“After Nature,” organized by the New Museum’s director of special exhibitions, Massimiliano Gioni, with assistance from Jarrett Gregory and Chris Wiley, writes its own book of revelation — one ripped directly from the headlines and from the fantasies of filmmakers, poets, writers, artists, and outsiders.Taken as a whole, and the show really only begins to cohere as a 90-work installation, “After Nature” layers fact, fiction, and myth; art, performance, archaeology, and documentary. It moves easily among war, famine, politics, disease, relic, sermon, and effigy; between hope and fear; between man-made and natural disasters. The exhibition suggests that the wrath of God, nuclear winter, AIDS, aliens, and kudzu all pose substantial threat.The exhibition’s strength is that, as an exercise in free association, it is a fluid and open-ended landscape. Although it leans heavily toward eco-terror, the show does not really have a pulpit-pounding agenda; nor does it take one track or one point of reference. “After Nature” is a warning sign, a red flag. But its signals are not easily read. The show suggests that the apocalypse takes on as many forms as there are visionaries. It suggests that catastrophe is not a date or an event or a form of rapture but that it is a consequence of a “way” of life; that, as with Rilke’s belief about death, and the apocalypse is extremely personal — a state of mind — that, as if, from a single seed, you grow and nurture your own apocalypse inside you.The show’s inspirations include Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a novel about a father and son’s survival in a ravaged, post-apocalyptic American landscape, and Werner Herzog’s “Lessons of Darkness” (1992), a film about the smoldering Kuwaiti oil fields ignited after the Gulf War. An edited version of “Lessons of Darkness” is included in the exhibit. Lyrical and sweeping, the film’s smoke, flame, and battle — in which firefighters, as if performing some sacred ritual, douse themselves with water — paint a world hovering somewhere between ruin and creation.One of the other key inspirations for the show was W. G. Sebald’s posthumously published book “After Nature,” three prose poems that weave together Sebald’s autobiography with the biographies of the 16th-century painter Matthias Grünewald and the 19th-century botanist Georg Steller. The very moving book “After Nature,” which conflates art, science, history, philosophy, and poetry, is also the show’s catalog. Sebald’s Modern Library text, appropriated in true guerrilla fashion, has been given a new slipcover, and illustrations from the exhibition, such as bookmarks, have been inserted within its pages.If the catalog feels like a gimmick, it is. And the show’s weakness is that it is more concerned with how broad and vague and open-ended it can be than with the quality of its individual artworks. The exhibition poses a lot of questions. Fine. But the show could stand a few more works that hold up on their own. Reverend Howard Finster’s ranting, hand-scrawled sermon cards; Robert Kusmirowski’s “Unacabine” (2008), an exact replication of the Unabomber’s Montana cabin; August Strindberg’s 19th-century “Celestographs,” images made by leaving photographic paper outside at night, and Pawel Althamer’s lame figurative sculptures all feel like extreme ends to a theme that is not fleshed out at its center. Nathalie Djurberg’s animated film “My Name is Mud” (2003) may deal with disaster and creation, as well as birth, death, and notions of filth and cleanliness. But one can find much more visually interesting transformations in nearly any Betty Boop cartoon.“After Nature” is a curator’s invention. The artworks, appropriated just like Sebald’s book, take a backseat to the larger curatorial vision. Very few of the pieces are charged enough to stand alone. They work best in tandem, as on the fourth floor, where Mr. Cattelan’s flying horse appears to have leapt from Zoe Leonard’s “Tree” (1997) — an actual tree, chopped, chained, tortured, and shackled; reassembled in the gallery — adding a bit of comic relief to the tree’s metaphors of enslavement and crucifixion.There are exceptions. Mr. Herzog’s film is arresting. Other memorable works include Arthur ?mijewski’s haunting, humbling, sometimes erotic, film “Oko za Oko (An Eye for an Eye)” (1998), in which a nude two-legged man walks and dances with a nude one-legged man, and in which a man, missing his hands, is assisted by a woman as he showers; Roger Ballen’s spare, brazen series of photographs that resemble documents of suicide or torture; and Eugene von Bruenchenhein’s “Gold Tower” (c. 1970s), a skeletal, jewel-like, leaning-tower made of chicken and turkey bones from the artist’s TV dinners. Another strong moment in the show is the bringing together of three of Nancy Graves’s early films, one each of camels, flamingos, and the moon. Here, as elsewhere, the sum is greater than the parts.The premise of “After Nature,” according to the catalog, is that it is a “requiem for a vanishing planet.” But the real metaphoric dialogue in this provocative exhibit is between man and nature — and, by extension, between the sacred and the profane. The balance, or dance, attempted here by Mr. Gioni — that of wilderness and civilization; futility and hope; control and letting go — deserves to be applauded. “After Nature” sets us adrift. Even though visually it ultimately fails, the show attempts something most art exhibits never imagine. What it doesn’t fully recognize, though, is that it is man, not the planet, that will ultimately vanish. The show is really a “requiem for a vanishing species.” “After Nature” would be more aptly titled “After Man.”Until September 21 (235 Bowery at Prince Street, between Stanton and Rivington streets, 212-219-1222).

An Apocalyptic State of Mind

An Apocalyptic State of Mind

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