Unnaturally

Employing artificial materials to create simulations of nature, the 18 artists featured in UnNaturally explore the ways in which the boundaries between nature and culture are sometimes blurred. Works by Tim Hawkinson, Iiigo Manglano-Ovalle, Roxy Paine, Marc Quinn and Francis Whitehead play on our nostalgia for an idealized pre-industrial past in which man and nature coexisted harmoniously in an unspoiled landscape--the same nostalgia that has given rise to constructed environments in malls, zoos and other themed "entertainment destinations" where nature is tamed and packaged for consumer use. Through an art of studied verisimilitude, impressive craftsmanship and occasional deadpan use of irony, the artists presented here suggest that the natural world can be reproduced with man-made materials just like any other mass-produced commercial product.