Doug Bosley’s “LD:4334.1409” is part of his series imagining self-replicating robots taking over decimated landscapes.
While the worlds of research science and fine art don’t typically collide, Doug Bosley isn’t a typical artist.
Bosley received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin in 2012, and, from 2013-15, served as honorary fellow and artist-in-residence in the Forest Lab at UW’s Department of Bacteriology. His new show at the James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center, Unexplored Map, makes masterful use of the antiquated Mezzotint style of printmaking and reflects the artist’s experience in the lab by conjuring an alternate world filled with Auxons — a population of small, self-replicating insectile robots that, initially programmed by humans, has autonomously spread into separate ecological niches.
The show, which is on display alongside artist Scott Espeseth’s Signal Bleed and runs through August 27, acts as a cross-sectional safari through an alien realm, in landscapes decimated by climate change. Bosley’s pieces range from large-scale colonies to single profile sketches. “LD:4334.1409” depicts “Collectors,” a sub-type of Auxon evolved to transport materials between sites. Each piece is intricately detailed and dramatically lit, dominated by black-and-white or indigo tones.
Bosley’s prints carry implicit but assertive political undertones — they question our ideas of technological progress and the future of the Earth’s species. The artist, however, works diligently to keep the show from getting too bogged down in these questions.
“One question I’ve been asking myself is: ‘How can I make work that is socially relevant but not overly didactic at the same time?’” Bosley said at the opening reception on July 14.
At times, Unexplored Map feels more like an otherworldly natural history museum exhibit than an art show. Bosley, having worked with Auxon for years, has created a comprehensive and meticulously detailed amount of narrative background for the species. Much of this information is displayed on laminated sheets throughout the gallery, offering viewers context for the images.
And this, more than anything, is the joy of Bosley’s work; each piece builds off the one preceding it. Stepping into Unexplored Map is stepping into another world entirely, one that is curious and eerie but also ethically aware.
Standing in contrast to Bosley’s work is Signal Bleed, the stark, and deceptively deep drawings of UW MFA grad and current Beloit College instructor Scott Espeseth.
Scott Espeseth’s “Night Windows” from his Signal Bleed series.
The chromatically muted pieces are small (“Picture Window” is 11” x 12”), and depict a series of quotidian scenes: “Potluck” (watercolor on paper, 2016) depicts a covered casserole dish on the floor of an unfurnished room; “Night Windows,” in a wash of red ink, shows two blank windows in the corner of an empty apartment.
This austerity forces every element, each object, to take on greater significance; and from this we begin to notice how things are very slightly — but fundamentally — off-axis in the world of Espeseth’s work.
The dish in “Potluck,” for example, is not only sitting on a hardwood floor, but projects an intense, dramatic shadow; “Bathroom,” a black-and-white ink scene of a commonplace restroom wall, contains a small, unexplained black circle with flickering white dots.
These strange, understated aberrations exude a quiet foreboding, an atmosphere of faint but creeping dread. The energy of each drawing is dormant but brimming with kinetic energy, coiled liked a snake.
“I think of [the work as] spaces where there’s some kind of crack opening between two different worlds. In a lot of my other work this would have been a little more obvious, but for this exhibition I brought together drawings where it’s a little bit more subtle,” says the artist.
And although easy to overlook, the dynamic in Signal Bleed is a delicately wrought balance between absence and presence. The simplicity of the images — and the important questions left unanswered — allows each unhinged element to resonate.