MICHAEL SKURA

Michael Skura's palpable landscapes - paeans to the natural environment presented in environmental form - build on spectacle. They grip us by engulfing us upon our very entry, cocooning us in darkness and then piercing that darkness with brilliant reflection. The effect is at once elaborate and primordial, seemingly brimming with intricate surprises but at the same time elemental in their relation to the natural universe (at least the universe we know). Indeed, the four natural elements are embodied in the two basic materials comprising these structures. Glass results from the application of fire to earth. Light is the sensory equivalent of air and water. But seen another way, light is airborne fire; glass is earth made liquid and transparent. Skura's art emerges at the crossing of these ancient metaphors, the experience of their dreamlike mystery buried as deep in human perception as the metaphors themselves... Skura has come to this expansive expression only in the last decade, but..