“Nothing Consoles You Like Despair”

Newly published on online art platform Contemporary HUM, artist, writer, and curator Boaz Levin unpacks the work of Berlin-based artist Richard Frater, exhibited in Germany and New Zealand in the last few years, most recently at Auckland’s Michael Lett Gallery.

Boaz investigates Frater’s practice which addresses the devastating impact of climate change on our environment, and the despair and human complicity felt in this global phenomenon.

“It’s difficult not to feel utterly helpless when confronted with this reality, knowing that individual action is but a drop in quickly rising, acidifying, ocean waters, that the problem is systemic, and far removed by orders of magnitude from the influence of individuals. The genie, it seems, has long escaped the bottle, and we’ve been left searching in the dark for an emission cap. But a realist fatalism can be as paralyzing, and as harmful, as denialism. So, what is to be done?”

Read the text in full here on HUM.

Article Source: Contemporary HUM, March 22, 2019

Image Credit: Richard Frater, Stop Shell (Live Rock Version), 2019, Fossilised coral, 3D printed macroscopic graphs, coral organism, marine aquarium, bio-media, plexiglass, 1460 x 400 x 400mm.