Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
American, 1968- ; 1964-
Departure, 1997
photogravure with beeswax, ed. 23/35
18 3/4 x 15 5/8 in.
SBMA, Museum Purchase with funds provided by Mrs. Rowe S. Giesen
2001.7
Undated photograph of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Chez Edmea
COMMENTS
We create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology's failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.
Rich colors and surrealistic imagery merge to reveal the poetic roots of the works on display. The use of color is intentional but abstract; proportion and space are compositional rather than natural; movement is blurred; objects and people juxtaposed as if by chance in a visual improvisation that unfolds choreographically. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations—this work attempts to provide powerful impact both visually and viscerally.
- Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Artist Statement
http://parkeharrison.com/statement
Exhausted Globe is a suite of four photogravures coated in beeswax in an edition of 35. This suite by artist Robert ParkeHarrison are fantastic in both senses of the word. After constructing massive props and sets out of machine parts, wood and found objects, ParkeHarrison photographs himself in their midst. The four for this suite, subtitled Exhausted Globe, Patching the Sky, Departure, and Consumption, involve a huge globe of scrap that the artist, dressed in a dark suit, engages in various ways. The imagery was inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, but ParkeHarrison's message generally bespeaks a darker tale of existentialism in landscapes "scarred by technology."
- Therese Mulligan, George Eastman House Catalog, 97:1107:0004, 7/97
http://www.geh.org/fm/mismis/htmlsrc27/m199711070004_ful.html#topofimage