PRESS RELEASE
DATE: AUGUST 24, 2021
EXPEDITION AIR ANNOUNCES ARTIST IN RESIDENCE COHORT
EXPEDITION Air offers an Artist in Residence program dedicated to helping artists create pieces that integrate materials made from captured carbon emissions. The company is proud to announce that Luis Merchan and Nat Cann have been selected to join the 2021 cohort.
Expedition Air’s artists use materials that are manufactured through a carbon utilization process developed by Carbon Upcycling Technologies. Using this material, Expedition Air’s mission is to create differently using carbon emissions. Its Artist in Residence program makes low-carbon materials accessible, allowing artists to integrate captured carbon materials into their pieces and enforce the need for art that makes the planet cleaner and safer.
Madison Savilow, Venture Lead for Expedition Air, says that “art is an effective way of mobilizing action for some of the world’s most complex issues. Climate change being one of the world's most pressing problems, art can create an emotional connection that prompts climate action.”
Expedition Air’s goal with its Artist in Residence program is to demonstrate that material made from captured carbon emissions can be used in art that educates the public about the Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage industry (CCUS).
Luis Merchan, a painter and sculptor from Bogota, Colombia, has been working with Expedition Air before becoming an Artist in Residence. His first introduction to captured carbon materials was to develop a paint made from captured carbon emissions which is appropriately named Carbon Dioxide Black. He uses this paint to create elaborate negatively colored artwork on canvases which can then be viewed with his proprietary app, Lumenoscope, to change the image to positive color.
Luis Merchan | Cooling the Climate Apocalypse
Luis created a limited 9 part series called Cooling the Climate Apocalypse for Expedition Air. Each painting is original and explores landscapes of mountains, rocks, sky, land, trees, oceans, waterfalls, rivers, and more. The paintings were imagined using an artificial intelligence program and are inspired by global landmarks declared as World Heritage Sites. The scenes were reimagined by an artificial intelligence trained with more than 75,000 photographs of natural places declared as World Heritage Sites. Luis plans to expand on this art through a sculpture series which incorporates the captured carbon materials.
Nat Cann is joining Luis in the Expedition Air Artist in Residence Program as a print maker from Atlantic Canada. Nat explains that his art has been “focussed upon the haunting of lands—relentless industries keeping afloat Atlantic Canadian notions of colonialist heritage, intentions which often find themselves misguided or victim to degradation, the reclaiming of lands by nature, time, or economics. This printed matter is often paired with minor installation so as to further query a place and what haunts said place. The haunting in this instance does not refer to a ghost or supernatural thing, but that which draws inquisitiveness of such places. And more often than not does this intrigue lead to different tales, things acting as a commutation of histories, landscapes, peoples, something sacred or something scarred. Such inspections have taken Nat across Canada resulting in an accumulation of Victorian houses, industrial landscapes and wild surroundings intermingling with forlorn steads so as to depict the typical Canadian rural withering.”
Nat Cann | Collagraph Prints using captured carbon as pigment for intaglio ink.
Through the Artist in Residence program, Nat will explore the possibility of turning captured carbon material into viable printmaking mediums, inks, grounds, and gels. Most print studios, printmakers and painters are actively recalibrating to environmentally friendly options, away from oil based choices and toward water based solutions and solvents; however, there are few brands that are actively tackling the issue, especially in the world of printmaking. Nat’s goal is to develop a new methodology using materials offered by Expedition Air so as to entice printmaking studios to use environmentally beneficial materials.
Although the program does not include a physical residency due to COVID restriction, Expedition Air offers sponsorship in the form of material, technical assistance, and business development support. The artist will have access to a showcase space at the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre. The artist fully owns the pieces created during the Artist in Residence program.
For artists interested in collaborations beyond the program, Expedition Air is open to partnership proposals. For more information, visit www.expeditionair.today.
ENDS
For media enquiries, contact Madison Savilow, Expedition Air, madison@expeditionair.today, (403) 862-3712
Notes to editors:
Expedition Air can be found on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
Carbon Upcycling Technologies (“CUT”) was formed to use the pollution of today to build the materials of tomorrow by converting CO2 gas into solid products. CUT sells advanced solid products derived from greenhouse emissions and cheaply available solids. Since 2014, CUT has scaled its ability to capture CO2 emissions from point sources, such as power plants, by over a million times. Through its portfolio of CO2-derived solid nanoparticles, CUT has technically validated its solutions for use in the plastics, coatings, epoxy, adhesives, concrete, lithium-ion battery, pharmaceutical industries, and consumer products.
Luis Merchan received his BFA from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, Colombia. He currently lives and works in Bogota and Coral Springs, Florida. He is a member of the Singularity University Global Community, which brings together and inspires leaders from around the world to promote and develop exponential technologies as tools that can solve humanity’s great challenges. His pictorial works are experiments where he explores his passion for these technologies, combines and juxtaposes them in the work, while reflecting on the impact theory has on the contemporary world. He has lately worked in collaboration with technology companies that develop solutions for some of the Global Grand Challenges. Among them, Carbon Upcycling Technologies of Alberta, Canada, a winner in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, which uses nanotechnology to embed carbon dioxide in a variety of materials. Luis has exhibited individually at the Espacio El Dorado gallery in Bogota and within the framework of the first Ibero-American symposium on innovation, science and new technologies at the Nueva Granada Military University in Bogota.
Nat Cann is a Canadian artist, a graduate of Mount Allison University, and New Brunswick provincial winner of the 2012 BMO Art 1st Prize. Nat has enjoyed exhibiting work across Canada in public galleries, artist-run centers, and workshops dabbling in assemblage, experimental printmaking and critical inspections of heritage. Such ideas have been explored from coast to coast via residencies and workshops in lands both fantastic and remote. Nat now resides in Saint John, New Brunswick, on the traditional lands of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi'kmaq Peoples where he currently instructs workshops in printmaking at the Saint John Arts Centre.
The NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE is a $20M prize in which competitors develop breakthrough technologies to convert CO₂ emissions into usable products.