Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber
Observatory
Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have been making art collaboratively for over nineteen years. With studios in both Brooklyn and Cincinnati, they construct meticulously detailed model environments and photograph the results. For the last decade, they have found inspiration in their urban surroundings, imagining a future mysteriously devoid of mankind.
Their miniature fake landscapes and interiors reflect a love of science fiction and dystopian entertainment (think Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run), an appreciation for great architecture and an affinity with the Sublime painters of the Hudson River School. Because the work is of a model and not a real place, it creates a safe space to consider the larger ideas of disaster and our collective future. Devoid of people, these spaces become meditative, revealing not just mankind’s errors, but also our optimism, ambition and love of life.