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SHOW TITLE: Empire
ARTIST: Claudia Hart
CURATOR: Murray Horne

Empire, by Claudia Hart, features a four-screen animation of a virtual monument running the “course of empire,” inspired by the paintings made by Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole’s series. For the opening, Hart created a performance featuring the composer Ella Joyce Buckley as an extension of her world. Empire slowly decays and molds as it transits from sunrise to sunset.

The exhibition also contains an installation of a cascading architecture including monumental projections of Harts metamorphosizing imagery, computer animations that are sensual but not pornographic within mechanized, clockwork depictions of the natural. Hart’s work subverts clichéd dichotomies of woman and nature pitted against a civilized, “scientific” and masculine world of technology. In Empire, she stages a romantic rebellion against technocratic and bureaucratic culture.