The Directors of Marlborough Gallery are pleased to announce the opening of The Arctic Melt, an exhibition of the recent photographic work of Diane Tuft. The exhibition will open on Wednesday, June 21st, with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. The work will be on view until July 20, 2017. The exhibition will be Diane Tuft’s third solo exhibition at Marlborough Gallery.
Tuft’s photographs capture, in ways that are as startling as they are captivating, the deleterious effects of global warming on the northernmost parts of the planet. She strives to present the earth’s mysteries which lie beyond the readily visible. The artist’s desire to photograph our changing planet took her on an epic trek around the Arctic that included stops in Norway, the North Pole, and Greenland, with each destination providing compelling confrontations with rapidly shifting landscapes and seascapes. Mountainous but retreating glaciers, sparse blocks of ice floating in the sea, and dwindling numbers of once plentiful polar bears are among the tableaux Tuft encountered and expertly immortalized. Her photographic work is both artistic and factual, scientifically documenting parts of the world which most human beings, for a variety of reasons including isolation, apathy and mistreatment of Mother Nature, will never actually see.
Tuft has said of her artistic journey: The Arctic is melting faster than any other place in the world. I felt compelled to photograph its splendor before the effects of global warming cause this landscape to disappear. In order to get a comprehensive picture of the fragility of the Arctic, I traveled to the mountain glaciers of Svalbard, Norway, the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice, and the icebergs and ice sheet of Greenland.
In addition to the new photographic work, a four-and-a-half minute video installation, entitled The Arctic Melt, will be shown in the gallery.
Diane Tuft is a mixed-media artist who has focused primarily on photography since 1998. She earned a degree in mathematics at the University of Connecticut before continuing her studies in art at the Pratt Institute, New York. Tuft has had solo exhibitions at Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT; Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT; and Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY. Her work is included in the permanent collection of Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; International Center of Photography, New York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; as well as numerous private collections. The artist lives and works in New York City.