SEPTEMBER 10
click on the picture below to see a larger image
BIOSPHERE, 2008
22" x 30", acrylic on paper - $7,500
KALTENBACH ANNOTATIONS: This soap bubble represents the fragility of our oceans, land, and atmosphere - the habitable zone on Earth; which has been compared to the thin skin of an apple. We screw it up in multiple ways and then depend on science to get us out of the jam.
I see the Military-Industrial complex as the big culprit although it is partly just human nature. I was born at the start of WWII and as a 4 year old I thought the whole thing was pretty cool, especially the fighter planes and bombers. In second grade after the war had been over for several years I was drawing tanks so well that I had more orders from my fellow students than I could fill. In movies it still retains a mysterious cache. Keeping it in the realm of art, even bad political art, seems the way to go. Otherwise this scale of conflict is just too destructive on the population and the environment. Even worse, it gives us bigger and better weapons that have reached the point where ultimately they can make our biosphere permanently uninhabitable.
Even without tools of war, we cause severe damage to the planet through destructive industrial practices; which are allowed and even encouraged by governments that are subservient to corporate entities. Environmental damage is clearly out of control but there are still spokespersons representing corporations who deny that there's anything wrong.
We finally admit that we are in trouble but the solutions that are being studied often bear potential dangers of their own which can't be adequately studied in the lab. That poses the problem: if they are tested in the field, what happens when things go wrong and a more dangerous threat is released into the world. I am made apprehensive by our habit of creating environmental crises and then trying to fix them with the same science through which they came into being.
WORKS THAT RELATE TO BIOSPHERE:
TROPICS DIET, 2007
8 1/2" X 11", ed. 20 and initialed ("SK"), printed with Epson Stylus Photo 2200 on Epson Matt Presentation Paper - $1,000