Christine Baeumler Reef Crab Larvae, 2006/07, Oil on panel, 12 x 12

Mark Dion Bureau of Remote Wildlife Surveillance, 2007, Detail of twenty 35mm 8 x 10 color photographs

Eleanor McGough Edge of Exuberance, 2006, Acrylic on panel, 24 x 24

The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder.
          -Bob Dylan

Dylan’s vivid evocation of a startling poetry in nature, revealed in a flash of stark power and insight offers a way of viewing the work of Christine Baeumler, Mark Dion, and Eleanor McGough. The notion of wonder also draws on Renaissance concepts behind the wunderkammern or cabinets of wonder—the precursor of museums—in which stunning arrays of natural specimens were displayed, generating a sense of awe in viewers about the multiplicity of the world. Naked Wonder brings together the work of three contemporary artists whose exploration of the natural world jolts us, prompting us to discover and attend to its intricacies, beauty, secrets, and revelations.

Based in rural Pennsylvania and New York City, Mark Dion works internationally on site-specific installations that call into question human relationships to nature and the ways in which culture constructs our ideas about the world. For Naked Wonder, he presents an installation of photographs from his Bureau of Remote Wildlife Surveillance. Its grid of surreptitious color photographs were taken by remote cameras set up on his Pennsylvania farm, triggered by motion sensors. For this piece, Dion drew from the range of animal life captured by his cameras, selecting only deer pictures. The photographs reveal in a flash of light the secret life of deer. His images remind us that nature at times resists human vision and observation, instead revealing itself in quick, furtive moments.

Similarly, Christine Baeumler is concerned with revelations of and relationships with nature. Like Dion, she travels to remote places to study natural environments and ecosystems. Also like Dion, she operates with a sense of emergency and urgency about human destruction of the natural world and is propelled to explore the work of early naturalists and theorists, such as Charles Darwin, to understand contemporary issues. Her work in Naked Wonder emerged from recent study trips to the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands. Baeumler’s paintings alternate between large-scale underwater scenes of sea life and those featuring simple, singular specimens, sometimes viewed in intriguing fragments. Her vivid palette of pinks, reds, blues, greens, and yellows imbues her work with vibrant energy and emotion that arrests our attention and creates a compelling sense of awe. Through her feats of painting, moving between thin washes and thick impasto, Baeumler invests her mysterious subjects with powerful presence that seem to demand our care and protection.

Like Baeumler, Eleanor McGough is a master colorist. Her densely layered paintings on both board and paper create intricate, jewel-like patterns, using imagery that suggests but does not necessarily directly reference actual plant species. Some of her built-up layers or compositional sections resemble microscopic worlds of amoeba, bacteria, or algae, which merge and overlap with other forms at various scales, creating dazzling shifts in perception. McGough relies on shapes and patterns from nature, sometimes translated through textile designs of botanical forms, and she is inspired by historical fabrics, botanical drawings, and scientific imagery more than direct observation of nature. Yet she, like Dion and Baeumler, discloses the interconnectedness of the natural world, in her case creating an imaginary order of her own making. Her playful, almost psychedelic designs evoke delight and invite sustained study. In more recent work, McGough subdues her color range to shades of gray, black, and white, as though viewing a magical garden at night, illuminated by moonlight.

Colleen Sheehy, curator