The Art World Evolves with Natural Selection Installation in San Francisco

art installation natural selection image
Image courtesy of Velvet da Vinci

Anyone familiar with the art gallery scene knows it's a dog eat dog world out there for artists—but Hilary Pfeifer's new exhibit "Natural Selection" gives a whole new meaning to survival of the fittest. Her "installation within an installation" opening on January 9th at the Velvet da Vinci Gallery in San Francisco appears at first glimpse to be a straightforward greenhouse—but step inside, and you'll find a vibrant, sometimes bizarre tribute to the forces of nature.

Inside, the viewer will find around a hundred different bonsai-esque sculptures where plants are depicted as having free will—and the power to act and make choices as humans do. A focus of the installation is relationships, and Pfeifer juxtaposes human behavior with plant life to comment on the primitive truisms of personal relationships. She also looks to the ways people try to exert control over nature, and how nature responds.

She says of the exhibit:

"I looked to many sources for inspiration including Darwin's writings pertaining specifically to plants, modern challenges to evolution theory of natural and sexual selection, erotica and contemporary nonfiction, singles ads, interviews, personal experience, and art history.
This project continues my ongoing exploration of the ways that humans attempt to control nature, and in turn, nature finds a way to adapt or reassert itself, such as grass that grows in the cracks of a sidewalk or mildew that forms on an uninsulated wall behind a couch."

For more information on the installation, visit Velvet da Vinci's website, or call the gallery at (415) 441-0109. To check out more images check out the Natural Selection image gallery

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Austin Green Art Temporary Recycled Artwork Installation
Second Growth: William Stranger's Art Installation “Invokes the Life Cycle of a Tree