Our brains didn't just fall off a tree.

Underneath the human brain, remnant layers of shark, whale, wolf, elephant, antelope and myriad other species’ brains are still imbedded in our very own. If the memory of Nature’s Evolution was conscious to us, we’d be able to clearly see the interconnectedness of man and animal. Of thought and stone.

Few art exhibits rise to the level of silent epiphanies. For the attentive soul, Ashes and Snow is potentially one such art event. Gregory Colbert’s Zen-like exploration of our ancient relationship with animals abandons art, film and nature photography and leaps straight into the spiritual realm, into a benevolent Jungian jungle of archetype animals and their powerful symbols of redemption, protection and inspiration on which humans lean on for the renewal of their very own archetypes.

If you have a child at home, please make sure they and their friends come. To see this entire exhibit at an early age may just change their life simply because it deepens their appreciation for nature all around them.

"In every child things tirelessly repeat their youth, the world resumes contact with its native form. He who looks for the first time is never an adult" --Michel Foucault

 
About Ashes and Snow:

After starting his career as filmmaker in Paris working on documentaries about social issues, Canadian-born Colbert –also a fine arts photographer- went on a ten year journey to exotic places like India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, Namibia and Antarctica to film, photograph and document the wondrous interactions between men and animals. The end result of this decade long work is Ashes and Snow

First shown in Italy at the Venice Arsenale, inside a 125,000 sq. ft, 15^th century shipyard, Ashes and Snow became the largest solo exhibition ever mounted in Italy. When the exhibit opened in New York on the Hudson River’s Pier 54, the show opened inside the current Nomadic Museum. Critical acclaim and vast numbers of visitors –over half a million on a three month engagement- repeated the Italian experience in New York. Colbert was also awarded the 2005 Curator of the Year Lucie Award for that exhibit in NY.

No great Master has the meditative quality of Gregory Colbert's work. It would seem the word Zen is his 'middle name'.

The Nomadic Museum is a custom-designed temporary structure built using 152 steel cargo containers. The Museum, first assembled for the NY exhibit, will now be the official Ashes and Snow Museum as it travels around the world. This amazing building is the creation of renowned architect Shigeru Ban. The design of the structure ‘evokes the journey of the exhibition as it travels to ports of call around the world’.

Inside, visitors enter the gallery space via a central wooden walkway bordered on either side by stone-filled bays over which the unframed artworks are hung from thin cables and suspension rods installed between the columns. This threshold establishes a visual boundary between the physical space of the public walkway and the mystical domain of the images. Above, a diaphanous handmade curtain made of one million pressed paper tea bags from Sri Lanka is suspended from the ceiling, floating 40 feet above the floor.

For further information, go to http://www.ashesandsnow.org/