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MICHAEL ASSIFF, Remediation Flowers
exhibition view at First Continent, Baltimore, July 2016

all images courtesy of the artist and First Continent, Baltimore

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The art venue First Continent in Baltimore is presenting works by MICHAEL ASSIFF in an exhibition entitled Remediation Flowers. Remediation is actually the act of restoring balance. Combined with plants, the term is called Phytoremediation and is basically the process to use special vegetals to clean up soil, air, and water contaminated with hazardous chemicals.

However ASSIFF‘s flowers in the exhibition are made of plastic and sclerosed on canvas which are hanging on the wall like out-of-date ornamental potpourris. Much of the rest of the gallery is given over to traces of elements that seem to have been removed as if a sanitation had happened in the space.

The results offer a reflection on presence and absence, positive and negative space, thereby reducing a philosophical line of inquiry to the confines of environmentalism.

Remediation Flowers by MICHAEL ASSIFF is on view at First Continent in Baltimore until August 21, 2016.