Gathering Paradise

Gathering Paradise

Feb 12–Apr 4, 1993

Gathering Paradise exhibited artworks from New York artist Sandy Skoglund. Few associations, from memories of classical paintings or the nightmare imagery of ecological apocalypse all the way to echoes of the glossy fantasies stoked by commercial photography, are out of place in the world created by Skoglund. For all its obsessive precision of execution, her work draws on the whole range of contemporary visual experience. Photography’s mixture of the real and the unreal, its reflection of the tension between the external and internal worlds is something that Skoglund continues to be fascinated by, “I find photography to be convenient as a unifying force for a variety of disparate mediums. It is, in a sense, a container to put many meanings in, with its own shape and rules and behavior… I don’t think this whole fabrication business is about the cynicism of how we’ve lost touch with reality, but how the world of ideas and the world of appearances come together.”