Flagstaff Modern and Contemporary Gallery announces Slash & Burn, an exhibition of works by seven artists investigating the expanded potential of landscape as a subject curated by Allison Klion of New Age Drinks. An opening reception will take place on Friday, November 4, 6-9 p.m., and the exhibition will be on view Saturdays 12 - 5 p.m. and by appointment through the month of November. 

Slash and burn agriculture is an ancient, and widely used, though controversial farming practice that involves clear cutting and then burning existing vegetation to provide a fertile base for new crops. Metaphorically it implies the rejection of existing standards to make room for new ideas. Klion draws on this metaphor to ask the Flagstaff community to question accepted modes of representation. Through diverse modes of working that are tactile, psychological, historical, sociological, anthropological, and formal, these artists re-evaluate the associated meanings of landscape. 

Using aerial images of Southwestern landscapes, Ida Badal (San Diego, CA) depicts beautifully chilling places, devoid of people, desolate but under surveillance. Ryan Chin (Brooklyn, NY) layers textural painting with imagery as diverse as Southwest postcards and Chinese restaurant art. Sally Warren’s (Dallas, TX) smeared iPhone photographs of mundane, roadside landscapes attempt to square the landscape painting tradition and the monumental views of the American West with the reality of her passive experience of them. Similarly, Katherine Kerr (New Haven, CT) documents a fleeting memory of her residency in Saugauche, CO with a loosely rendered, ethereal oil snapshot. In his first (and only) attempt grappling with Grand Canyon Travis Iurato (Flagstaff, AZ) repurposes materials from an earlier project to evoke the rugged materiality and brutality of the canyon’s rocky landscape in monochromatic relief. Alex de Carli (Saguache, CO) creates tenuous, site-specific sculptures made of materials found on long walks, and presents their temporary existence in photographs. The back room of the gallery will be dedicated to a tiny jewel-like study of Grand Canyon that Lucy Kirkman Allen (Bavon, VA) made one frigid February morning on her honeymoon while her husband slept. 

Allison Klion is one half of the curatorial duo New Age Drinks along with Travis Iurato. The pair’s recent projects include Drink Piece, an intervention into the impending Arizona water crisis, The Snake Gulch Project, a short-term, intensive rural residency program, and New Age Drinks Gallery in Jerome, AZ. For more information visit NewAgeDrinks.org and connect @NewAgeDrinks on Facebook and Instagram

Flagstaff Modern and Contemporary is an exhibition space operated by Northern Arizona University Painting Professor Franklin Willis located at 215 S. San Francisco Street in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona.