An Outside Phenomenon

An Outside Phenomenon 

November 6  - November 30, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday November 7, 5-8pm

State of the Art Gallery announces an exhibition of recent work by Christine Chin, one of three exhibitions opening this month at our Ithaca gallery. The exhibition includes 24 photographic prints and a window installation of silkscreen and 3D printed models, the majority of which are being shown publicly for the first time. This is the third exhibition at the gallery of Chin’s work.

Chin brings the outside inside with larger-than-life prints of moths and bees, giant pollen grains and multi-panel botanical prints. She is best known for her blue cyanotypes, but her current explorations with light-sensitive and chemically active pigments bring earth tones and color to her photographic prints. Ultraviolet light is an underlying theme of the exhibition, as it has been used to attract the nocturnal pollinators she photographs, it is essential for exposing the emulsions, and it activates the glowing pigments in the window installation.

Also on view will be the Rare in New York portfolio, which will be exhibited together for the first time. Chin calls these “ghost” photograms since they look like photograms but are made from herbarium records of collected plants that have since become rare or have disappeared from the state of New York. The iridescent silvered surface of these prints is a product of the unusual darkroom chemistry.

The title of the exhibition is from an essay by John Green:

I am insulated from the weather by my house and its conditioned air, I eat strawberries in January. When it is raining, I can go inside. When it is dark, I can turn on the lights. It is easy for me to feel like climate is mostly an outside phenomenon, whereas I am mostly an inside phenomenon.

John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet