On display at the Marlborough Gallery are roughly four dozen beautiful photographic images, many large-scale, of sites on the planet earth taken from outer space. Perched on board the International Space Station for eleven days in 2009, Guy Laliberté focused his Nikon camera on sites in the Sahara Desert in Egypt, Dolzhanskaya Point in Russia, the Balkhas Lake in Kazakhstan, the Euphrates River in Turkey, and others in the U.S. and Tibet to bring to our attention not only their beauty, but their fragility.
Conventional wisdom holds that the determining wars to be fought in the future will be over water. In the face of such sentiment, Laliberté designed this creative project for his ONE DROP initiative, “a charitable organization that develops integrated, innovative projects with an international scope, in which water plays a central role as a creative force in generating positive, sustainable effects for local and foreign populations and in the fight against poverty”.
Like the Renaissance man, Laliberté channels his energy and skills into a variety of initiatives: founder of Cirque du Soleil, Chair of ONE DROP, stilt walker, fire eater and accordionist .
Accompanying the exhibition Assouline has published both an artist’s book and a trade edition titled GAIA with images from the show and more besides.
Elizabeth Davis
