Peak oil. Hypnotic highways. Beatific bike riders. Theories, nightmares and visions about transportation and energy coalesce in a local art exhibit devoted to our foolish petroleum dependence: "Running on Empty: The Fossil Fuel Addiction" is on view at the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA) through Mar. 22. Curated by local environmental writer, editor and musician Bart King, the exhibit offers a learning experience wrapped in an easy-to-digest package of art, video and industrial objects, including the featured photographs of New York-based German artist, Christoph Gielen, who takes a helicopter’s-eye-view of the Celtic knots formed by superhighways and the hidden geometries of suburban development. 

Along with work by artists imported from New York, Pennsylvania, Canada, Texas and Florida, a selection of locally grown work includes mosaics by Krysia Haag, a sculptural installation by the Athens Academy “SEEDS” Club (Students for Environmental and Educational Development Services) and a mixed media installation by John English.

Haag has been showing mosaics of increasing complexity and charm in recent exhibits. Her work on display in "Running on Empty" presents positive alternatives to consumption doom and gloom. Haag says, “It was a great opportunity to mosaic ‘transportation solutions’ to the ‘inconvenient truth’ of resource decline. My "Berliner Bikes" mosaic (recently featured on a Flagpole cover) was based on a photograph I took of cyclists using a multi-modal road in Berlin, which contained clearly defined spaces for bikes, pedestrians, buses, trams and car traffic.” 

Haag’s piece "Shinkansen Train by Mt. Fuji," based on a picture found among thousands on Google Images, depicts the iconic mountain overlooking a now-iconic high speed train, a stand-in for all emergent technologies that might help dispel the haze that commonly obscures the view of Fuji’s peak. 

A different peak preoccupies Maddie Dahl, Graham Ferguson, Cate Jackson, Kristin Lawson and Elizabeth Naclerio of SEEDS in their thought-piece "Peak Oil." Referencing M. King Hubbert’s oil production theory, the hanging installation employs bundles of black drum-like corks to depict a timeline and histogram of global oil production to help the viewer understand the likelihood that production had already peaked between 1980 and 1999. According to the exhibit catalog, “[t]he students of the SEEDS Club are the youngest artists to have ever exhibited at ATHICA.” SEEDS advisor, artist and Athens Academy faculty member Lawrence Stueck said that the primary focus of the club is environmental, including growing food in the school garden to share with the local homeless shelter, but there is “a close overlap between members of SEEDS and our industrious, curious, creative art students. The students going on in art are very excited to have their work in 'Running on Empty.' They realize what a privilege and honor it was to be selected.” 

Civil libertarian, artist, journalist and editor John English experienced the genesis of his installation "Iraq on Empty: Gas Line in Baghdad" when he identified with a photograph in the newspaper of “hapless guys standing in line” for gas. 

“The irony of the situation was not lost on me - the second-largest oil-producing country in the world didn't have a steady supply for its own citizens. What was that implication for the rest of us? In this work I felt like I was standing at the end of the line and anxious that I would be shut out of the limited supply. It's an unsettling feeling because I have not yet created other options for personal transportation and public transportation is so inadequate in the U.S. 

English appropriated (with permission) the Reuters photograph by Ceerwan Aziz, producing a large-scale print on vinyl that pixilates the original halftone newspaper image into one with a spectrum of grays. The gas cans assembled around the base of the image suggest that we will all be lining up soon, so grab a can and fall in.

Other works of note include Morgan Craig’s photorealistic oil paintings of the abandoned factory spaces of mid-century fossil-fuel-dependent industries and Isaac King’s clever, creepy and lyrical animated video of a modern everyman who consumes energy and produces puffs of greenhouse gas. While the style of the drawing and the music is contemporary, the anthropomorphism recalls the great animal character cartoons of the 20th century, with details such as power-puffing bedroom slippers. However, the most unexpected highlight of the show is the industrial objects that project the future alternatives. As much as “green” and “sustainable” are favorite advertising adjectives these days, how many of us have actually encountered a solar panel or a wind turbine? The simple presence of these functional, beautiful and talisman-like objects makes the technology seem much more accessible and believable: coming soon to our own houses and yards. 

ATHICA’s mission as an alternative arts space is different from that of a museum or commercial gallery. Rather than canonizing artists or picking the pockets of collectors, their goal is to bring the community together to talk about issues and share ideas through the shared experience of art. Many of ATHICA’s exhibits are driven by the point of view of a particular curator or artist. Bart King is a news editor, columnist and podcaster of SustainableBusiness.com, a website covering “global news and networking services to help green business grow, covering all sectors: renewable energy, green building, sustainable investing and organics.” ATHICA Director Lizzie Zucker Saltz explained their practice of selecting curators from outside the art world in order to promote inclusiveness and dialogue, saying, “I consider ATHICA to be like a curator incubator. Sometimes we seek them out, sometimes they come to us. In the case of Bart, we knew we wanted to show Gielen's art, and I was way over my head on environmental issues, so Bart was perfect. We've never had anyone before who was coming from a business perspective. Because of this, Bart’s first idea was to have these industrial objects.” 

Asked about his curation process King said, “My primary focus was to choose art work that was aesthetically attractive. If it wasn't something I could enjoy looking at for an extended period of time, it didn't make the cut. At that point I began to look at what environmental/energy issues were addressed in these works. That's when I found, not surprisingly, that so much of the work was focused on oil. From a climate change viewpoint, coal is a much larger threat, and I would have liked to have more pieces in the show dealing with coal, but I was somewhat limited by the submissions we received. Ultimately, though, the show has a much broader reach than just climate change, and I'm happy with the diversity of topics addressed - from the war in Iraq and oil commodity prices to urban development, rising oceans and algae farming. It's all in the mix.”

The result is an exhibit in which the sometimes-perceived-to-be elitist exclusivity of contemporary art is up-ended. The visual images are aesthetically pleasing and accessible; it is the activist aspect of the show that requires additional context. The exhibit is strongly supported through the catalog and website, which employ the exhibited works as a point of departure to highlight issues surrounding the theme. Viewer comments on the integration of theme and art at the fun and well-attended opening event on Jan. 31 included words such as “didactic,” “biased,” “subversive” and “not-subversive-enough.” Such inconsistent reactions are evidence that ATHICA is fulfilling its mission, as described by Zucker Saltz, of “bringing people to a space where they can have discourse about issues; it's fun, and it's not a church, not proselytizing, but a place to share ideas.” 

Lauren Fancher