30,000 Pressings

Rachelle Dang

Curated by Kyle Hittmeier and Amanda Nedham

Press Release

Super Dutchess is pleased to announce Rachelle Dang’s site specific installation, 30,000 Pressings. Using the plant press as a jumping off point, Dang has created an exhibition that questions the neutrality of Enlightenment machines. It stands as part of a serial investigation of works that heighten our awareness to complex histories. Through subverting linear taxonomic processes she continues to transform objects into surrogate bodies for contemplation.

Artists have a storied history of setting sail with expeditions, traditionally in the role of botanical illustrator, aiding in the establishment of floating archives. From Sydney Parkison who accompanied James Cook on the HMS Endeavour to Henri-Joseph Redouté who followed Napoleon into Egypt, these archivists took part in a tradition of performing objectivity, though they ultimately served agendas. This unique subject position enabled them to at once revel in the project of developing scientific fields, while further facilitating the opening up of these lands to myriad problems, including cultivating fetish.

Rachelle Dang flirts with the artist’s lineage, but denies the collector’s impulse to extract, the illustrator’s desire to aestheticize, and the cartographer’s want to demystify. Instead, through subverting machines that appear museologicially neutral, she conjures new territory by inviting the viewer to survey the plant press as a self-conscious landscape of awe and oppression. Dang utilizes Super Dutchess’ unique space by transforming it into a vitrine, thus creating an intersection of two mechanisms of classification to examine the performance of objectivity, surveillance, and legacy.

In 30,000 Pressings, the plant press becomes the object of scrutiny. Dang subjects the press to a dramatic scale shift that highlights the complex network of meaning in which it was entangled. The potential for menace is heightened as the enlarged version appears capable of pressing a human body. Holes initially designed to allow for gentle compression of specimens transform the machine into a site of exchange, a metaphor for how we understand and renegotiate historical narratives. The plate is permeable, fluid; a non hierarchical membrane through which things can flow in and out.

Through size manipulation the press has taken on an uncannily medieval form, while the flower bodies retain a scale of this world. Instead of appearing flat and dry, they are robust and ghostly, reminiscent of the coral that James Cook may have come upon when he first set foot in Hawaii in 1778. Dang’s decision to present the plants as bone-like, breakable, and distinctly unpreservable, speaks to the fragility of human life and the precious ecosystems affected by colonial ventures. The holes also take on a more aggressive nature as they perforate a pattern recalling those associated with the plant craze of the 18th c. that belonged to the upper class. The excessive ornamentation, or camouflage, was a sign of connoisseurship and wealth, but also worked to conceal the darker side of colonial era exploits. In 30,000 Pressings Dang balances wonder and dread, reminding us that meanings are contingent and that nothing is fixed. The exhibition offers a measured form of optimism in uncertain times.

Extended Release

The herbarium is a curious compendium steeped in a controversial history that fetishsized collecting and classifying through trespass. The discovery of the medicinal properties of plants dates back to before the Silk Road, however the interest in ‘exotic’ plants exploded as botanical sciences were developing rapidly in the Enlightenment era. European explorers equipped their ships with floating laboratories, and set off at rapid pace, all in the service of the myth of discovery. Herein, a dangerous precedent was set that saw conquests consuming mass resources in both their countries of origin and abroad.

As the tools of exploration were being used to chart many facets of worlds unfolding under the European gaze, the larger momentum of the Enlightenment was simultaneously grappling with a loss of order. The insatiable desire for the new fueled forced encounters, and although it expanded discourses or led to entirely new ones, it was often at a human price, leading to subjugation and indigenous land dispossession. Trade and extraction were folded into a calculated narrative of wonder that was commodified in the translation from plant to plant representation; from body to pattern. These extractions from foreign territories also cultivated prized possessions. Susan Stewart, in Separation and Restoration describes such objects as the exotic souvenir: objects that serve both as specimen and trophy. Such exotic objects emit a sense of the foreign, though also tell the tale of a “immediate” encounter of the territory.

In the 18th c. wallpapers, quilts, and furniture were dripping in the spoils of flora as an interest in natural history became defining of the upper class. This helped to establish an aesthetic and narrative border that separated the dark side of the Enlightenment from the emerging taxonomies built on excess.

Extended Release

The herbarium is a curious compendium steeped in a controversial history that fetishsized collecting and classifying through trespass. The discovery of the medicinal properties of plants dates back to before the Silk Road, however the interest in ‘exotic’ plants exploded as botanical sciences were developing rapidly in the Enlightenment era. European explorers equipped their ships with floating laboratories, and set off at rapid pace, all in the service of the myth of discovery. Herein, a dangerous precedent was set that saw conquests consuming mass resources in both their countries of origin and abroad.

As the tools of exploration were being used to chart many facets of worlds unfolding under the European gaze, the larger momentum of the Enlightenment was simultaneously grappling with a loss of order. The insatiable desire for the new fueled forced encounters, and although it expanded discourses or led to entirely new ones, it was often at a human price, leading to subjugation and indigenous land dispossession. Trade and extraction were folded into a calculated narrative of wonder that was commodified in the translation from plant to plant representation; from body to pattern. These extractions from foreign territories also cultivated prized possessions. Susan Stewart, in Separation and Restoration describes such objects as the exotic souvenir: objects that serve both as specimen and trophy. Such exotic objects emit a sense of the foreign, though also tell the tale of a “immediate” encounter of the territory.

In the 18th c. wallpapers, quilts, and furniture were dripping in the spoils of flora as an interest in natural history became defining of the upper class. This helped to establish an aesthetic and narrative border that separated the dark side of the Enlightenment from the emerging taxonomies built on excess.