Alison Moritsugu “inconsequence / in consequence”

Littlejohn Contemporary presents the exhibition, inconsequence / in consequence, new work including painting, sculpture and wallpapers by
Alison Moritsugu. 

Alison Moritsugu’s inconsequence / in consequence continues her exploration of human interaction with the natural world and with a changing environment. Her works focus on how seemingly small changes in this relationship can have potentially larger implications in the future.

The exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, wallpaper prints and sculpture. Moritsugu skillfully weaves together art historical tropes with present day environmental concerns using art and history to examine our past and present relationship with the land.

Moritsugu is originally from Hawai‘i and during return visits has kept track of drastic changes she’s witnessed in the landscape Littoral Folly, a decorative wallpaper with scenes in rococo vignette depicts images of tractors replenishing beaches, concrete shore barriers, tsunami sirens and houses built on stilts. The folly is that the shoreline is where land and sea merge, forever shifting. It will never remain as a defined, permanent boundary despite human effort to keep it that way.
Moritsugu’s ongoing series of log paintings on tree slices with bark intact, examine contrivances in landscape paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries. Two new companion works titled Remnant and Vestige, have been painted on Eastern Ash, each log comprised of 77 growth rings. The Ash tree is being decimated by the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect from Asia. 

A spectacular new work in the exhibition is a large floor piece titled Talisman. This sculpture, with a highly polished surface, has been “tattooed” – carved into and inlaid with black. The images are motifs from old sailors’ tattoos caught in maelstroms of nature. Historically, sailors tattooed themselves with ships, propellers, stars, swallows and pigs – symbols for hope and protection from dangerous storms. Moritsugu created modern versions using environmental terms such as “resiliency,” “adaptation” and” mitigation” – words now associated with climate change and rising sea level.

Big Pineapple and King Cane, two oval paintings in koa frames, depict scenes of the few remaining pineapple and sugarcane fields in the islands. They are a nostalgic documentation of the once plentiful agricultural land which is steadily being converted into housing developments. Chaparro Repeat is a wallpaper done while Moritsugu was on a residency near San Diego, not far from where the Cedar Fire burned in 2003.

Alison Moritsugu’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at the Honolulu Museum of Art at First Hawaiian Center; Lux Art Institute, CA; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, WI; and the Knoxville Museum of Art, TN. Group exhibitions include the Maier Museum of Art, VA; Palmer Museum, Penn State University, PA; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art; Frost Art Museum at Florida International University; and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, MO. In 2011, she completed a mosaic commission for the MTA Arts for Transit. Moritsugu received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. The artist has been represented by Littlejohn Contemporary since 2000. She currently lives and works in Beacon, NY.