At the Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn, “Invisible Landscape” features the artists of the LABVerde Art Immersion Program in the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil. The program promotes an intensive experience in the rainforest to explore the connection between science, art and the natural environment. This leads to artistic creation through a constructive debate about environmental issues generated by both theory and life experiences in nature.

While many countries drive their economies from Amazon resources, the realization of this value is synonymous with its destruction through deforestation for cattle ranching and the soy monoculture. The perennial value of the Amazon, therefore, is politically and economically invisible. The artwork on show explores the mythos of the Amazon and reflects on the various “ways of knowing” that can arise from first-hand experience.

The artists employ various strategies to understand their experience and relationships to the forest; observational aesthetics, embodied knowledge, archiving and cataloging, speculative visioning, and personal dialog. These objects and experiences may be interpreted as documents, narratives, or relics, each unveiling a hidden way of valuing of this world resource. On show are the works of Tatiana Arocha, Michael Clemow, Lucy Helton, Daniel Kukla, Bianca Lee Vasquez, Bia Monteiro and Lisa Schonberg.

Opening image: Bia Monteiro, Tucumá, 2018. Archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches. Courtesy the artist.