Garden of earthly delights

Author: Chris Grosso

Pictures of surreal, Aztec-like encampments. Close-ups of vibrantly colored and silicone-preserved flowers. Snap shots of Claude Monet's water-lily park. Pin-hole prints of whooshing dandelions, and intimate, portraits of private estate backyards. Even images of the little planters from jailhouse grounds. Though varied in subject and perspective, these photographs all communicate the notion of the garden.

To commence its 2005 program, the Middlebury College Museum of Art has offered the opportunity to explore the real and fictitious world of cultivated landscapes. At once mystical and serene, eerie and frightening, the myriad photographs present ethereal and contemplative views of natural terrain. Entitled "Contemporary Photography and the Garden - Deceits and Fantasies," the exhibition features 67 photographs from sixteen American and European artists, diverging in design, scale, and color scheme. The headline is derived from a 13th-century poem, Roman De La Rose.

The first photographs in the exhibition represent the creative endeavors of Gregory Crewdson and set the reflective tone of the show. The untitled works materialize the imagination of Crewdson with fabricated spaces of flowers, butterflies, and hair braids. Colorful and lively just like the creatures that occupy the setting, Crewdson stages a fantastic garden, reminiscent of an Alice-in-Wonderland setting.

On the adjacent wall, Marc Quinn's "Italian landscape" series feature images of an aquarium-like atmosphere. In documenting a large scale installation of a 1997 garden comprised of flowers frozen in silicone and preserved in a refrigerated, enclosed environment, Quinn generates a sensational scene in which the color is intensely animated.

At the exhibition's crowded opening, on Thursday, Jan. 20, Tom Padon, the Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs of the American Federation of Arts, explained an inspiration for his second curatorial project. To renovate his quaint Berkshire house, Padon looked to landscaping as the means of re-inventing the standing structure. His creation of a garden compelled him to consider the subject and idea in a new perspective. It is with this mindset that Padon conceived his investigation into the beauty and rich metaphorical association of gardens.

Some highlights of the exhibition include Sally Apfelbaum's mural-sized prints of Claude Monet's garden in France, Linda Hackett's trippy color-pinhole photographs of Long Island gardens, panoramic shots of the Villa Medici gardens by Geoffrey James, and Len Jenshel's fine-point photographs of gardens in California and South Carolina.

A captivating series in the exhibition is the photographs of Sally Mann's study in Las Pozas in Mexico. Commissioned by the AFA, Mann explored Englishman Edward James' surrealist garden in the jungle of San Luis Potosí. The luscious and tropical paradise is detailed with tribal monuments, wooded structures and swimming holes. The fading and blurring of the black and white images enable Mann to evoke a feeling of a dreamlike playground.

Throughout history, gardens have inspired artists. In the recent centuries, artists, however, have diverged from capturing the natural and focused on creating commentaries on urbanization and the decline of untainted land. In the exhibition's catalogue, Professor Robert Harrison of Stanford University theorized, "We belong to a gardenless era. These who can afford them may keep up their own private gardens, but the garden as a place of insight, as an ideal of self-cultivation, as a sanctuary from the excesses of history, or as a promise of happiness, no longer thrives in our midst." The garden itself is a dichotomy or rather a contradiction. It is a containment of nature - an issue that many of the photographers on display attempt to address.

The installation of Peter Fischili and David Weiss demonstrates an original treatment of the conception of gardens. Over the course of a year, the two artists photographed various gardens at different times of the year in Switzerland. Presented as superimposed slides, the overlap of photographs creates unexpected juxtapositions of scale, form, and color. Mesmirizing, the cinematic experience parallels the progression or cycle of nature.

The exhibition "Contemporary Photography and the Garden - Deceits and Fantasies" will be available for viewing until Sunday, April 17. The exhibition is made possible by a grant form the A.R. Brooks trusts and Founders Circle of the America Federation of Arts. At the College, the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Fund has provided support.The Middlebury installation marks the inauguration of the exhibition, which travel to five other venues in the United States. Among these are the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York; The Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina; and the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington.

The gorgeous images are emotionally charged and stimulating. Evoking ideas of nature, civilization, beauty, and passion, the two-dimensional explorations give vision into the realm of gardens. The refreshing photographs invite the viewer to take a step inside and get lost within the garden world, and for a few moments, escape from the sub-zero, Vermont climate.