Life
Cycle Analysis
Through April 16, Intersection for the Arts
Detail of "Life Cycle Analysis" (2005), by Gestalt Collective;
Photo by Scott Chernis.
LIFE-CYCLE
analysis is a technique employed by environmentalists to evaluate the complete cost of products, from manufacturing, to use, to managing the resulting waste. For their show "Life Cycle Analysis," the Gestalt Collective has adopted the practice to construct an installation that presents the international dynamics of production, consumption, refuse, and reuse through painting, sculpture, photography, video, and text. As much as it is an art project, the installation is a science exhibit, rich with information and supporting materials gathered by the artists and the gallery staff, who partnered with environmentalist organizations and local waste-management companies to put together the show. One wall of the gallery presents the West Coast of the United States through a mural and sculpture, constructed by NoMe Edonna, including billboards promoting the latest trends in commodity consumption and a huge wave of garbage rising up to the ceiling. Small boats in the center of the room carry tall stacks of trash to the opposing wall, where Andrew Schoultz has painted a mural and constructed a sculpture of the heavy industry in the third world, which bears the burden of most of the world's waste and produces the majority of consumable goods. On the ceiling, Ricardo Richey has built a cardboard sculpture of white-and-gray smoke rings, which shows the results of these processes returning, by way of Gulf Stream currents, to America's shores in the form of acid rain. Photographs and text on the remaining walls of the gallery document details from this seemingly endless process of waste production, and recommend ways it might be modified. The emphasis of the show shifts from science to art as one finds oneself entirely surrounded by waste. The artists challenge the presumption that trash disappears into an imagined black hole, by directly presenting the way in which we live with our pollution. Text in the show and accompanying materials emphasize personal responsibility as a solution to this environmental crisis. But implicitly the show also raises issues that challenge the idea of personal responsibility as itself belonging to the ideology of consumer capitalism and, like the authors of the widely debated article "The Death of Environmentalism," insist that the environmental crisis be addressed in conjunction with other sociopolitical crises arising from current international relations and an economy predicated on the endless production of new desires. Wed.-Sat., noon-5 p.m.; Tues., by appt., 446 Valencia, S.F. (415) 626-2787. (Clark Buckner)
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