In Search of a Myopic's Leitmotif - Ryan Taber + Cheyenne Weaver
January 22- February 13th
Opening reception: Saturday January 22nd 7-9pm

Exhibition Notes

On Coleopterists; Natural Selection and the Mal’Aria…

Originally termed the “Ague,” the word malaria was coined in Italy based on the popular belief that all fevers were caused by exposure to noxious gases released by rotting organic matter, or “bad air.” Malarial Fever is characterized by flushed climaxes of heat to chills, wetness in perspiration to dryness of the mouth. Particular in its pattern and mysterious intensity, the fever shares a striking similarity to the cycle of climax in a Wagnerian Aria.

1. French Botanist and companion of Alexander Von Humboldt, Aime Bonpland contracted malaria on their primary reclassification journey through the Orinoco. Cured by a specimen of powdered bark, Bonpland went on to classify over 60,000 new plant specimens of the Americas.

2. Famous coleopterist Sir Alfred Russell Wallace suffered a bout of malaria while in the Moluccan islands. Delirious with fever, his revelations of Natural Selection come to him without knowledge of Charles Darwin's work on the subject. Wallace later went on to write passionately about socialism, imperialism, and pacifism.

3. During his career classifying a great number of species of beetles and mosses of South America, Richard Spruce spent a decade in South America trying to smuggle out the quin-quina seeds in a humanitarian attempt to provide the benefits of quinine to the rest of the world. He succumbed to the ague in Maipures while exploring Cerro, and collecting specimens of wild Barbacaenia Hypnum mosses. He spent thirty-eight days in a delirious trance, falling victim of a “familiar cycle of thirty-six hours of fever followed by twelve hours of remission” (15, The Fever Trail: Honingsbaum)

4.Henry Walter Bates traveled to the Lower Amazon with Sir Alfred Russell Wallace, spending many years collecting specimens and gathering observations for his theories on mimicry in insects and beetles. After publishing on his papers on Batesean Mimicry, he too fell ill with malaria and was forced to return to Europe.


On Chinchona and Colonialism…

The administration of medicinal quinine is known to cause notoriously vivid and intense nightmares, acute nausea, and possible short term loss of eyesight and intense myopia. However, the ingestion of the native bark in small amounts is a tonic, profoundly adept at blocking the cyclical regeneration of the most voracious falciparum malaria virus.

By the 1840’s, Europe’s consumption of the Chinchona bark was fast outgrowing its supply. Without quinine the British could not have colonized the malarious interior of Africa, nor would the Dutch succeeded in their control of the East Indies. By creating a blockade of quinine to the Confederacy, the Northern United States succeeded in primitive germ warfare; a strategy which Napoleon and other Colonial crusaders were well aware of.

On Dermestid Museorum Linneaus beetles and the Taxonomic Institution…

Typically used by museums and taxidermists to meticulously clean bones of grease and flesh, the Museorum beetle have been known to escape and eat entire collections of pinned beetles, dried leather and botanical specimens, boring through even the wooden legs of museum benches. Throughout the exhibit, the beetles inside the sculpture will bore into the actual Styrofoam rocks and scene, staging the “Waking of Brunhilda” scene from Wagner's ring cycle.