The Vanderbilt Museum of Suffolk County, 180 Little Neck Rd, Centerport, NY 11721. April 23—June 30, 2022
On Saturday, April 23, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum debuted Related Searches, the first solo museum exhibition by New York artist Christopher Tennant.
Tennant’s artwork—a mix of avian and aquatic dioramas and vitrines, handmade lamps, and collected specimens—reimagines natural history as an extension of commodity culture and the decorative arts. His brilliantly illuminated cases combine antique taxidermy with discarded consumer products to provide a stark visual representation of the beauty and terror of an ecology altered by human industry and the algorithmic marketplace.
Related Searches is the inaugural exhibition in the Vanderbilt Museum’s newly launched contemporary art program and runs through June 30.
The Storefront, Bellport, NY 11713. November 20—December 31, 2021
Christopher Tennant’s illuminated vitrines and cases have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, W magazine, and New York magazine, among other publications. Influenced by the ecological beauty of the Bellport-Brookhaven area, where the artist has resided for over 15 years, his pieces are assembled from vintage and found materials to capture intimate moments from the natural world that may have never happened. Though his work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, he has never shown in Bellport. Fittingly, his inaugural showing in his adopted hometown includes a new collection of decorative lamps inspired by the cosmopolitan creative energy that radiated from Brookhaven Hamlet throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.