Mimi Plumb's new exhibition, Landfall, offers an uneasy view into a world that is seemingly under threat and on the brink of nuclear war. Plumb's dystopian images provide the viewer with a narrative that is as much ominous as it is seductively mesmerizing and compassionately human. Landfall exquisitely interweaves its storyline through strangely alluring and peculiar landscapes, from video arcades, dioramas, and mysteriously-charred, house-fire remnants to beautifully-composed, flash-lit portraits of friends and strangers — offering a view into a time of extreme disquietude and intrinsic humanism.
Of the work, Plumb says, "Years later, the burnt lamp reminded me of when I was 9 years old; during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963 when my mother told me that there might be a nuclear war. For a period of time, I would wake up in the middle of the night to repeatedly look at the hallway clock and worry about not sleeping. At school, my classmates and I practiced getting under our desks.” Plumb's masterful images, though set in the 1980s, are poignantly timely in present times.
The exhibition will be on show at the Robert Koch Gallery until June 29, 2019, and is accompanied by a 2018 monograph of the same title.
