Paolo Mentasti
_ E _ _ _ _
Aug. 18, 2021 – Sep. 24, 2021

Paolo Mentasti’s exhibition  _ E _ _ _ _  anticipates future botanical specimens germinating from buried spent fuel nuclear rods millions of years after their sowing in Plutonian depths. Nuclear plants are already growing among us. The ruby red grapefruit was created in the nuclear gardens of the 1950s, where plants were grown near sources of radiation to see what would happen. Radiation randomly triggered a favorable mutation in a grapefruit that prevented its deeper red color from fading to pink. The sculptures in Mentasti’s exhibition are the hybrids of wild plants in Nevada and the fences and barbed wire that settlers of the North American landscape have been cultivating since the nineteenth century. Just as we have turned to mimic nature to accomplish engineering feats such as velcro and the speed train, someday nature will turn to our time-tested forms for survival and inspiration. 

Borne out of the coupling of extreme irresponsibility and measured responsibility, Mentasti’s future plants give shape to immediate environmental anxieties soothed by forthcoming technological innovations. Can the damaging effects of our waste be contained in “perpetuity,” or are these desires inherently contradictory? 

Paolo Mentasti was born and raised on a plane flying between Sao Paulo, Bogota and Mexico City. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020. He lives in Philadelphia, where he is a candidate for a Sculpture MFA at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. Paolo Mentasti was awarded the Martin Rothenberg Travel Fellowship in 2019 to travel to Chennai, India and research the ice trade and water scarcity. In 2020, he received the Elliot Lash Memorial Prize for excellence in sculpture. His art practice involves drawing, ceramics, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation.