Rick Silva (b. 1977) is a Brazilian-American artist based in Oregon. He received his MFA at the University of Colorado in 2007 and currently works as an associate professor of art at the University of Oregon. Silva works in video, images and 3D animations, traversing the boundaries of art and technology. Much of his art centers around nature, conjuring questions of wilderness, ecology, and climate change. Silva’s work blends natural and virtual imagery in unique ways, one of his most inimitable series being “The Silva Field Guide to Birds of a Parallel Future”. This show features Silva’s video work, Western Fronts: Cascade Siskiyou, Gold Butte, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Bears Ears (2018). Using aerial video footage from four national monument sites across Oregon, Nevada and Utah, Western Fronts uses an unusual blend of sensory images, both visual and auditory, evoking a cacophonic experience of nature. The series was made in response to the decision of the United States Department of the Interior to reduce the borders of the four national monuments, vastly diminishing sacred indigenous sites. Silva’s Western Fronts allows viewers to contemplate climate change and the politics of the natural world, and their role within it, in a compelling, almost hypnotizing way.
![[+]](https://www.thegundgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-Fall-Exhibition_8466-scaled.jpg){kind=link}