Peter Nadin
Taxonomy Transplanted

The Horticultural Society of New York
December 12, 2012 – February 8, 2013
 

“The plant is rooted in the soil; our knowledge of the plant is rooted in language.”

An exhibition by artist and farmer Peter Nadin, Taxonomy Transplanted featured a series of new paintings on handmade bamboo and cattail paper, a short film (created with Aimée Toledano), and a book. Like much of his recent output, this body of work was created on the artist’s Old Field Farm in Greene County, NY, and was inspired and facilitated by the farm’s landscape, plants, livestock, products, and activity. With the farm and the plants from its landscape as the backdrop, Nadin explored our tenuous dependence on language and the subjectivity of how we use it to label, classify, and put to use what surrounds us.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition, Taxonomy Transplanted: Art, Language, Farming (Edgewise Press, 2013), contains writings by the artist, including an essay on art and agriculture, a farm diary, and a film script, as well as photographs documenting the paintings and the papermaking process. It also features essays by Robert L. Beyfuss, Jason Farago, Chris Murtha, and Glenn O’Brien.
 

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Essay: "Transplanted Taxonomy – Notes on Art, Language and Nature"
Press: Artforum