Chloroplasmic Colonnade ©Noah Baen

   An environment created and nurtured by Brooklyn-based artist Noah Baen, “Chloroplasmic Colonnade” will be resident at Safe-T-Gallery in Dumbo from September 14 to October 14th. The installation will contain both living and inorganic elements, gathered mostly from the streets and back lots of Brooklyn, and will reflect on both our spiritual and our scientific understandings of the natural, green world.
Arranged a bit like a cloister, the different elements of the piece will be centered on a chloroplastic oxygen generator, a prop from a basic botany course, which will be actively capturing light energy and releasing pure oxygen -- oxygen that will be captured and periodically released into the gallery. Fully cognizant of the differences between the controlled, air-conditioned environment of an art gallery and the rougher, more immediate world of the streets of Brooklyn, the installation will attempt to broaden our understanding of each.

   Noah Baen, trained as a painter, has in recent years worked primarily with site-specific installations constructed with plant material and found objects. These installations, which are by their very nature ephemeral, have been located in public parks and community gardens as well as in galleries and public interiors throughout the United States. Friends of Safe-T-Gallery will recall his mugwort and peephole installation here in the summer of 2005. Other pieces have been seen recently at Wave Hill in Riverdale and Nurtureart in Brooklyn. One project “Sunflower Moon” which Baen called an “artist-assisted environment of volunteer plants, found materials and sunflowers” has been an ongoing presence in an undeveloped section of the United Community Centers Community Garden of East New York, Brooklyn since 2001. The success of this community garden plays a part in “Chloroplasmic Colonnade,” as the amount of ‘undeveloped land’ at this site has shrunk to zero, as their urban farming program has expanded. Many of the plants and archeological shards that were a part of “Sunflower Moon” will be included in Chloroplasmic Colonnade.

   Noah Baen has installed and exhibited widely and his is work is in many private and public collections, including the Smith College Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Chloroplasmic Colonnade will be exhibited during two Dumbo “First Thursday” events, in a special preview on September 7 and on October 5 as well as during the Dumbo “Art Under the Bridge” Festival on October 12th and 13th.