The Volcano Zeitgeist

Everyone is talking about it. There's already a list of the top 11 volcano jokes. Fave:

First, Iceland goes bankrupt. After that, it sets itself on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it.

Even in the art world everyone is talking about it. From Jonathan Jones using it to highlight his favorite 5 volcano paintings to the chatter about the number of galleries who were forced to cancel their booths at Art Brussels ("In spite of the ash cloud, only 6% of the galleries may have problems to reach Brussels in time.") or Art Cologne (only have anecdotal reports of US galleries not being able to get their)...Eyjafjallajökull (or "Hank," as one dealer who couldn't get to Europe has taken to calling the huge hole in the earth belching up so much disruption) is a, er, hot topic in the art world as well.

Coincidentally, one of the photos in our next exhibition, "American ReConstruction" a group exhibition of new photography organized by that very savvy collector of contemporary photography and super snarky witty blogger, Mike at MAO (otherwise known as Michael Hoeh), is a work by Matthew Albanese that looks like a volcano. What it really is, is explained here:

tile grout, cotton, glass, plexi, red phosphorous ink, six 60 watt bulbs & fake fog. The explosion of lava was sampled from a picture I took of fireworks(the only composited element). This model was illuminated by it's own light source.

The result of combining tile grout, cotton, glass, etc. is rather remarkable:

Matthew Albanese, Volcano, 2009, c-print mounted on Plexiglass, 40" x 21”, edition 10.