Bonny Leibowitz
Statements for each body of work can be found with accompanying portfolios under "Work" or as a PDF here.

Artist Statement

My work considers nature in relation to the built environment, the studio to land art, and photography as a substitute for reality.

The site-specific objects and installations embody concepts of Post-naturalism, challenging the objectification of nature as pristine, separate from humans and here for the taking. I investigate narratives that have enabled the alteration and degradation of the natural world.

These environments consist of sculptures I call hybrid objects, composed of natural and manufactured materials such as mangled steel, plastics, and salvaged architectural parts along with tree roots, bark and branches. I collect these elements while on West Texas day trips and from neighboring streets and scrap yards. I also document the ravages of tornadoes, droughts, and flooding and print the images on wall-sized sheets of aluminum, film, and paper. I then cut, heat, and reconstruct these large prints as façades—pictures of nature peeling away from the walls and floor.

The inclusion of salvaged parts came about after I happened upon an active demolition site. Suggestive of a war zone crossed with an amusement park, the scene was both horrific and beautiful. The poetic elegance of the mangled steel and the destruction of the façade was unexpected and mesmerizing. This moment sharpened my awareness of the land’s ravages and the inextricable entanglement of nature and industrialization. I photographed the site and collected debris - processes and materials that have since become integral to my work.

The installations function as facsimiles of nature, where the distinction between reality and representation erodes over time, and the veil between other and self, out-there and in-here, continually thins.