Photo courtesy the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU
“Hedges, Edges, Dirt,” at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU through Jan. 6, gives us five variations on a theme: what we are in the natural world and how the environment affects us.
Pascale Marthine Tayou’s “Plastic Tree” installation casts shadows along the gallery wall that resemble leaves, but the branches are bare except for a colorful variety of bags. Tayou, a Cameroon native, demonstrates the fragility of nature amid our cavalier disregard. In the third-floor space is Rashid Johnson’s “Monument,” a separate exhibition in the ICA-commissioned “Provocations” series. Here, Johnson constructed the form of a chapel, brimming with growing things and lined with shelves holding pots and works by the late Dick Gregory and Mark Twain, among others. Works by David Hartt and Abbas Akhavan round out the exhibition.
