Pace Gallery is currently presenting JoAnn Verburg’s “For Now” through August 20 at the New York space in Chelsea.
In the exhibition, Verburg debuts recent multiple-frame photographs and video works depicting olive trees captured on three continents. Along with the artist’s multidisciplinary practice over four decades, these new experiential artworks offer a contemplative urban environment in response to a period of social and political unrest and the ongoing COVID-19 virus. “For Now” invites viewers to pause and enter a world of self-reflection, a place where the artist has called it an “imagined reality,” as her images become performative vehicles to drive existential encounters between the viewer and the world.
Since 2010, Verburg has continually experimented with the process of photo and video installations within an urban environment that both acknowledge the environment and provide an escape from it. Her desire to exhibit her images of olive trees in New York has grown to reflect her interest in the disconnect between the meditative space of the gallery and the busy world outside. By repeatedly using the same subject matter, her images in three-dimensional spaces showcase a variety of vantage points, framing, and light, while employing techniques of classical craftsmanship.
