Locust Projects is pleased to present BOG-MIA, a new installation by New Yorkbased sculptor Virginia Poundstone, known for her exquisitely crafted sculptures that examine the art historical, scientific and economic significance of flowers. The works in this exhibition take their material and formal cues from the logistical machinations of the cut flower industry in Colombia. Miami is the main point of entry for the products of this industry: retail bouquets containing carnations, roses and baby’s breath, which enter Poundstone’s practice as artifacts of a vast industrial system producing the aesthetics of popular emotion.

At Locust Projects, Poundstone describes this vast nature-transforming system through her first video installation, which she likens to a landscape painting. The impressionistic sequences, shot in fields, greenhouses and shipping facilities, set the ambiance for a series of new sculptural works consisting of printed screens, aluminum panels and eternalized flowers. The sculptures are supported by platforms made of brightly printed cardboard shipping boxes scavenged from the importer’s warehouse near Miami International Airport.

BOG-MIA is the second of Poundstone’s epic seven-part exploration of the international flower trade, which she began in the Valley of the Flowers in the Indian Himalays and will continue at an international auction house in the Netherlands; the headquarters of the California industry; an Ikebana master’s garden in Japan; Kenyan flower fields; and an expedition with a botanist discovering new varieties of flowers in the South Pacific.

Poundstone’s deep interest in flowers as a subject that describes our twenty first century cultural existence began when she assisted her grandfather, an agricultural researcher, on hikes through the forests of Kentucky documenting wildflowers. As he sought beauty in the forest, Poundstone is, in her words, “searching for beauty in the global exchange system.”

ABOUT VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE

Virginia Poundstone (b. 1977, Kentucky) has exhibited at numerous galleries and institutions, including KANSAS Gallery, New York; Cleopatra's, New York; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; Sculpture Center, New York; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2013, she was awarded The Howard Foundation Fellowship, the Agnes Varis Fellowship at Urban Glass and was an Artist-in-Residence at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Poundstone received a BA/BFA in Writing and Fine Arts from Eugene Lang College and Parsons School of Design at The New School for Social Research, and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York and teaches at Parsons The New School of Design and the Maryland Institute College of the Arts (MICA) in Baltimore.

Special Thanks: Dan Gelfman, Diana Nawi, Ascoconflores, Diana and Richard at 4direcciones, and Miguel Cardenas.