Alex MacLean

Exhibitions

A selection of exhibitions that feature the work and career of Alex S. MacLean. 

  • Amman, JordanI Hear America Singing: Contemporary Photography From America Fall 2021 Curated by Ashley Lumb WEBSITEThe first exhibition of American photography to take place in Amman, Jordan, I Hear America Singing: Contemporary Photography from America deconstructs a singular notion of national identity to convey the United States’ kaleidoscopic diversity. Through a combination of digital, analogue, conceptual and archival approaches, the sixteen photographers exhibited here offer a collective rebuke to a foundational legacy of white male cultural hegemony. By acutely interrogating the nuanced landscape of American identity and its ideological elisions, their work helps to broaden the lexicon of the country’s visual culture and the people it represents.The exhibition is divided into three main parts – Landscape, Portraiture, and American History. The stunning large-scale images of aerial photographer Alex Maclean, taken from his Agriculture (2016) and Arid Lands (2009) series, demonstrate a tension between civilization and nature. Their bold colors and geometric forms beguile, but equally signify an environment denuded by anthropogenic activity.
  • Seoul, Korea; Beijing, China; Melbourne, Australia; Marseille, France Civilization: The Way We Live Now Fall 2018-Spring 2021 Curated by William Ewing, Bartomeu Marí and Holly Roussell Perret-Gentil. WEBSITE Civilization: The Collective Life is a major exhibition, featuring the work of 100 of the world’s finest photographers. It addresses and illuminates major aspects of our increasingly global 21st century civilization. It stresses the fact that contemporary civilization is an extremely complex collective enterprise. Never before in human history have so many people been so interconnected, and so dependent on one another. In science and art, at work and play, we increasingly live the collective life. The Olympic Games, the giant Airbus, CERN, MRI, the Trident Submarine, Wikipedia, the Academy Awards, the International Space Station, Viagra, the laptop computer and the smartphone... However we feel about any of them, none of these complex phenomena would have been possible without superlatively coordinated efforts involving highly educated, highly trained, highly motivated, highly connected people. Taken as a whole, this exhibition takes stock of our civilization’s material and spiritual culture, ranging from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and from civilization’s great collective achievements and its ruinous collective failings, expressing thoughts and feelings in the richly nuanced language of photography. And though it features photography of the real world, it embraces different ways of dealing with it, from the ‘straight’ document to the mise en scene. It must be stressed that this is decidedly not a didactic exhibition; images, not words, tell the story of civilization – i.e., the photographs do not illustrate a thesis – they are the thesis. Civilization: The Collective Life focuses on shared human experience. We may have never been on a Dreamliner or attended the Academy Awards or met Paris Hilton, but we know all about them, whether we want to or not. Most of us have never come face with an Al Qaeda operative either, but we all have to take off our shoes at security. In his book Civilization (2011), the historian Niall Ferguson notes: “These days most people around the world dress in much the same way: the same jeans, the same sneakers, the same T-shirts... It is one of the greatest paradoxes of modern history that a system designed to offer infinite choice to the individual has ended up homogenizing humanity.” This strange paradox is at the heart of Civilization: The Collective Life. Among the photographers under consideration:* Olivo Barbieri, Peter Bialobrzeski, Edward Burtynsky, Lynne Cohen, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Lauren Greenfield, Chris Jordan, Nadav Kander, An-My Lê, Richard Misrach, Robert Polidori, Toshio Shibata, Taryn Simon, Thomas Struth, Massimo Vitali, etc. *At the end of the research phase, an estimated 150 photographers will have been selected.
  • Cullowhee, North Carolina Curious Terrain: WNC From the Air Spring 2020 Curated by Carolyn GroschWEBSITEExperience stunning aerial photographs of the WNC region by Alex S. MacLean, an artist and pilot with over 45 years of experience taking images from the birds-eye perspective of an airplane.Newly commissioned by the WCU Fine Art Museum, MacLean's striking images of the seven western most counties of North Carolina capture the unique qualities of the region’s built environment while also raising broader questions about humanity’s impact on the land through agriculture, energy, industry, and housing.
  • Seaside, Florida High Art: Alex MacLeanSpring 2019WEBSITEHIGH ART presents the aerial photography of Alex MacLean in conjunction with the Seaside Prize, the annual weekend-long award ceremony for The Seaside Institute®. The Alex MacLean exhibition showcases 12 aerial images that depict the relationship between natural and constructed environments – including agriculture, dwellings, and beach.
  • Chaumont-Sur-Loire, FranceRenaissances2018WEBSITEIn 2018, the highly acclaimed landscape photographer Alex MacLean flew over the châteaux in the Centre-Val-de-Loire Region and captured them on camera to commemorate the 500th anniversary celebrations of the Renaissance. These architectural marvels of the Renaissance, nestling within UNESCO World Heritage listed sites, grace MacLean’s photographs in a way that reveals the quintessence of this age when royalty and patrons set an extraordinary revival of art and thought in motion.He casts these World Heritage masterpieces in an altogether fresh and contemporary light. The châteaux of Chenonceau and Chambord, Amboise and Azay-le Rideau and many more besides thus appear as we have never seen them before. This exhibition seeks to offer up a reflection, magnifying the timelessness and universal beauty of these stone wonders which sit majestically within their surroundings, untouched for centuries. With a keen eye, MacLean has subtly captured, in the golden light of the Loire’s river banks, the power and grace, harmony and symmetry, perfection of forms and proportions of buildings that have inspired and impressed for centuries.
  • Boston, MA.Sting 27: Over EasyOpening Reception: May 16th, 2018 from 6-8pmWEBSITEThe exhibit entitled, Alex MacLean: Over Easy, is The Beehive’s first solo show with a singular artist, featuring 14 powerful and descriptive images showcasing the relationship between natural and constructed environments. As a pilot and photographer, Alex MacLean has flown his plane over much of the United States and Europe documenting the landscape and as a trained architect, he portrays the history and evolution of the land highlighting the changes from human intervention and natural processes. MacLean’s photographs have been exhibited widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and are found in private, public and university collections.The Beehive’s ongoing Sting! series always signifies the launch of a new art installation, and the opening of each exhibition highlights the many facets of The Beehive’s concept, bringing together great live entertainment, delicious food and libation specials along with amazing art! Guests are invited to celebrate the opening night of The Beehive’s 27th Sting! installation.
  • Notions of HomeJuly 12 - August 25, 2017Opening reception: July 12, 6-8pmWEBSITEIn response to the ongoing crises of population displacement and income disparity, Notions of Home explores the idea of how {quote}home{quote} can manifest in a myriad of ways, whether physical or psychological, permanent or transient, ancestral or nouveau, aspirational or impoverished.Featuring John Baldessari, Tina Barney, Mike Brodie, Amy Elkins, Mitch Epstein, Samuel Gratacap, Jitka Hanzlova, Anthony Hernandez, David Hilliard, Lisa Kereszi, Justine Kurland, Laura Letinsky, Alex MacLean, Esko Mannikko, Andrew Moore, Mark Ruwedel, Sebastiao Salgado, Julius Shulman, Mark Steinmetz, And Larry Sultan.
  • AutophotoApril 19 - September 24, 2017WEBSITEThirty years after the exhibition Hommage à Ferrari, the Fondation Cartier will once again focus its attention on the world of cars with the exhibition Autophoto dedicated to photography’s relationship to the automobile. Since its invention, the automobile has reshaped our landscape, extended our geographic horizons and radically altered our conception of space and time, consequently influencing the approach and practice of photographers. The exhibition Autophoto will show how the car provided photographers with a new subject, new point of view and new way of exploring the world. Organized in series, it will bring together 400 works made by 80 historic and contemporary artists from around the world including Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Lee Friedlander, Rosângela Renno and Yasuhiro Ishimoto. Capturing the geometric design of roadways, the reflections in a rear-view mirror or our special relationship with this object of desire, these photographers invite us to look at the world of the automobile in a new way. The exhibition will also include other projects such as a series of car models that cast a fresh eye on the history of automobile design, created specifically for the show by French artist Alain Bublex. It will be accompanied by a catalogue including over 350 reproductions, an alternative history of automobile design, essays by scholars working different disciplines and quotes by participating artists.Curators: Xavier Barral and Philippe SéclierAssociate curators: Leanne Sacramone and Marie PerennesImage: Settlement, Wickenburg Area, Arizona (060213_0011)
  • Oldenburg, Germany Man and Coast: What to do When the North Sea RisesOctober 29, 2016 - April 26, 2017 WEBSITE Large-format aerial photographs by the American photographic artist Alex S. MacLean show impressively the German North Sea coast, its natural developments and the consequences of human interventions. The advantages and risks of the centuries-old dyke construction are as visible here as the rethinking of the marshes by cleverly placed tidepolders and reconcile the land with the water. The exhibition unites the artist's eye with the analysis of the scientists and provides thought for dealing with the steady rise of the sea level in the coastal regions.
  • Finite WorldSeptember 10 - October 8, 2016Alex MacLean takes both hands off the controls of his two-seater Cessna 182, grabs his camera, leans out the open window of his cockpit, and starts shooting. The plane, meanwhile, starts wiggling. MacLean is an artist and also a cartographer. He's exhibited in museums internationally, including a solo turn at the Menil Collection in Houston. Two years ago he won the Prix de Rome, a venerable award in landscape architecture. Through these photographs, he shows the organizations and urban developments that define the different lifestyles and consumption.Finite World shows MacLean’s images of oil production centers across the United States and Canada that capture the strange beauty in the shape and form of environmental destruction, the patterns of tank farms and unnatural edges, colors and designs of cleared acres of factories, pipes, pumps and drainage basins-the precise structures of their profit making.
  • Sizing It Up: Scale in Nature and ArtOctober 10, 2015 - September 18, 2016WEBSITEThis exhibition in PEM's Art & Nature Center explores the concept of scale – from the nano-sized to the galactic – challenging our perception of perspective, relative size and proportion. Featured works include miniatures, sculptures, photography and installations loaned from regional, national and international contemporary artists, as well as works from PEM's collection. Interactives enable audiences to experiment with visual scale and to explore the role scale plays in art andour perception of the world around us. Sizing It Up features works by the following artists: Bryant Austin, Vaughn Bell, Christopher Boffoli, Nicole Catrett, Sally Curcio, Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards, Jan Dunning, Mary Edna Fraser, Robert Gendler, Linden Gledhill, Patrick Jacobs, Chris Jordan, Cornelia Kavanagh, Brian Knep, Alex MacLean, Vik Muniz, John Newsom, Jill Pabich, Angela Palmer, Jeanée Redmond, Joel Robison, Michael Paul Smith, Marilu Swett, Sarah Seabury Ward and Wensdy Whitehead.Image: Surfers Behind Breaking Waves at Sunset Beach, Oahu, HI (LS_6556_29)
  • UnearthedApril 4 - November 1, 2015The artist and aviator Alex MacLean has spent years capturing the changing landscapes across North America on camera, and persistently denounces the many {quote}ecological absurdities{quote} that mark our day and age.He endeavours to shed light on what we can't, or refuse, to see, “what we look at without understanding, and especially the ties that govern the spaces between the natural and constructed environments”. His pictures reveal “the effects of time, geological movements, shifting landscapes, urban sprawl, redeployment and the overlapping of surfaces and activities”. He is also unwavering in his portrayals of the damage that industry inflicts on the earth and the steady destruction of beautiful landscapes.Paradoxically breathtaking in their beauty, his photos condemn examples of irresponsible land abuse by human industry: open-air quarries or oil fields, the reckless excessiveness of which the photographer brings sharply to the fore in his aerial shots.Image: Oil Swirls on Tailing Pond, Syncrude Mildred Lake, Alberta, Canada 2014 (140914-0088)
  • Aerial PerspectivesMarch 3 - 29, 2014WEBSITE{quote}An artist with a unique perspective - Alex MacLean takes us out of the streets and into the skies, reducing humanity down to the size of a model. A fully licensed pilot, MacLean uses his highly efficient Cessna 182 carbon fibre aeroplane to explore the world recording landscapes, architecture and human behaviour from a bird's eye view. The resulting photographs are thought provoking, yet beautiful, an investigation into humanity's footprint on the natural world. Farming patterns, coastal resorts, military sites and bizarre housing developments are just some of the poignant scenes featured in MacLean's first ever London show.{quote}
  • October 5, 2013Park Plaza CastleArtCetera Auction 2013Paddle8 Online AuctionMore than twenty-five years ago, a group of Boston-area artists came together in response to the AIDS crisis, which was claiming the lives of so many of their friends, fellow artists and colleagues. They responded by creating and organizing the first ARTcetera, a contemporary art auction held at Boston City Hall, to raise money for AIDS Action Committee.Over the years, ARTcetera has grown to become one of New England’s premier art auctions and an essential funding source for AIDS Action. And, while the AIDS epidemic looks nothing like it did 25 years ago, this epidemic and AIDS Action’s work are far from over.Once again, the arts community and AIDS Action will celebrate our extraordinary partnership in this fight to stop the epidemic by preventing new infections and optimizing the health of those living with HIV.
  • Sept 12 - October 6, 2013ArtPrize 2013The expansion of habitation into the desert reveals how cultural and economic forces are slow to adapt to, and even ignore, the realities of nature. These pictures show land surveyed and divided for ownership and laid-out to be accessed by motorized vehicles, a built landscape that is neither sustainable nor self-sufficient. The settlement pattern defies nature in the face of climate change as other habitats are simultaneously upended along low-lying coastal areas and in forested fire zones. The images question our values and collective reality beyond the settlements seen on these arid lands. MacLean’s powerful and descriptive images provide clues to understanding the relationship between the natural and constructed environments.
  • Views From AboveMay 17 - October 7, 2013WEBSITEViews from above considers how an elevated perspective, from the first aerial photographs of the mid-nineteenth century to the satellite images, has transformed artists' perception of the world.Covering more than two thousand square metres, the exhibition gives us the power of Icarus and in some five hundred works (paintings, photographs, drawings, films, architecture models, installations, books and journals) offers a singular and spectacular view of modern and contemporary art.There has been a considerable regain in interest in the aerial view over recent years. From the success of Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Earth From Above to the popularity of Google Earth, we are fascinated by this bird'seye view as much for the beauty of the landscapes it reveals as for the feeling of omnipotence it inspires.The exhibition draws on this popularity to return to the origins of aerial photography and explore its impact on the work of artists and, consequently, the history of art.When Nadar took his first aerial photographs from a hot-air balloon in the 1860s, he freed the gaze. To contemplate the world not at eye-level but from a flying machine was to destroy the perspective thinking of the Renaissance, based on the human scale. The moving, floating body is no longer the fixed point that conditions our vision of space. This new, panoramic view blurs landmarks and relief, slowly transforming the land into a flat surface whose visual reference points are no longer distinguishable one from the other.Right up to today, artists, photographers, architects and film-makers have continued to explore the aesthetic and semantic implications of this displaced perspective. Now this fascinating journey is the subject of an unprecedented multidisciplinary exhibition.The exhibition unfolds in eight themed sections – displacement, planimetrics, extension, detachment, domination, topography, urbanisation, supervision – that travel through the modern era, marked by two world wars. Innovative scenography takes visitors through time as well as space: little by little, the {quote}view from above{quote} rises from balcony level to a satellite.
  • Bird's Eye ViewJune 14 - September 8, 2013Curated by Helen Klisser During, Bird’s-Eye View features major contemporary photographs, paintings and drawings from the Andrew and Christine Hall Collection. Each of the works on view depicts a real or imagined landscape from an aerial perspective. Observed from overhead, people, roads, buildings, cities, and the countryside are deconstructed and abstracted. The exhibition features works by Richard Artschwager, Olivio Barbieri, Edward Burtynsky, Christoph Draeger, Fred Herzog, Damian Loeb, Alex MacLean, David Maisel, Richard Misrach, Melanie Smith, Massimo Vitali, and Thomas Wrede.Image: Massimo Vitali, Rosignano Donna Sola, 2004
  • Landmark: the Fields of Photography14 March – 28 April 2013WEBSITEThis novel exhibition presented by the Positive View Foundation was the first of its kind anywhere to show both the harsh, even brutal realities of the changing environment, as well as its enduring and stunning beauty, it was a wide-ranging and ground-breaking exhibition featuring more than 70 of the world’s most highly regarded photographers from North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, with many of them showcasing previously unseen and recently completed works. Focusing on our rapidly changing planet the exhibition featured more than 130 original works of art taken by enterprising photographers employing technology ranging from 19th Century plate-camera techniques to the use of planes, drones, robots and even satellites to capture vivid images of earth’s varied terrain – and even distant planets. Many of the major names in photography were represented: Mitch Epstein, Nadav Kander, Robert Adams, Simon Norfolk, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee Friedlander, Simon Roberts, Toshio Shibata, Robert Polidori and many others contributing spectacular imagery. Also featured were striking images by a younger generation of photographers: Pieter Hugo, Susan Evans, Ivar Kvaal, Penelope Umbrico, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, and others.William A. Ewing, the exhibition's curator explained: “Landscape has been and remains one of the most powerful forms of photography, and is even more so in a world which is changing so fast we can hardly keep up. Rising seas, melting glaciers, the ozone hole, desertification, coastal cities under threat - we add to the list everyday. And photographers everywhere are grappling with these problems, creating brilliant pictures which put a vivid face on otherwise abstract issues. These images range from the sublime to the ridiculous; photographers are on the front lines - our eyes and ears. But they also remind us to slow down and appreciate the beauty of the world – often where we least expect it{quote}.Our education pack for Landmark: the Fields of Photography is a downloadable resource for both teachers and students, that provides contextual information on the exhibition and highlights suitable lines of enquiry.Bay Channel, Fremont, California (LS_1802_07)
  • Chaumont, FranceSur les toits de New YorkApril 6 - November 7, 2012WEBSITE
  • Lincoln, MAAlong the ShoreSeptember 6 - October 11, 2011WEBSITE
  • The American Landscape at the Tipping PointMay 5 - July 2, 2011WEBSITEImage: Concentrated Solar, Clark County, NV 2009 (091025-0502)
  • L'Avenir du Futur (The Future of the Future)February 5 - March 15, 2011WEBSITEImage: Prescott, Arizona, 2005 (050216-0111)
  • Vegas / Venice | Fragile Mythen Auf Energie(Fragile Myths Based on Energy)September 10 – November 13, 2010WEBSITEPhotographer and pilot Alex MacLean explores the vast and ever increasing development of large areas of land. He captures the changing nature of natural landscapes from the bird’s eye view of his plane: golf courses, suburban developments, even entire cities that devour deserts, lagoons and farmland. In his latest work, MacLean has focused his camera on two cities that are shrouded in myth as well as ecologically endangered: Las Vegas and Venice.Both cities were constructed using enormous amounts of resources in environments normally considered hostile to human settlement. Both are popular travel destinations that are acutely threatened by climate change. MacLean’s photographs are deceptively beautiful in the manner they depict the extravagantly wasteful use of resources from the unusual perspective of high altitudes.The exhibition is a joint presentation of the Eres Stiftung and internationally acclaimed publishing house Schirmer/Mosel, which is also publishing a book of 160 color photographs that illustrate the fragile beauty of these cities, places that are also symbols of the human ability to turn visions into reality.
  • August 29 - September 19, 2010Campiello Santa Maria Nova Working for EPAD (Etablissement Public d'Amenagement de La Defense), to photograph and document the highrise district three miles outside of Paris, on the Historical axis which runs from le Louvre and through l'Arc de Triomphe, to show EPAD in its original context, as well as look at issues in the surrounding neighborhoods, and conditions for connecting the highrise district with pedestrian spaces. A selection of this study of work was exhibited in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale as part of a collateral show. “Alex MacLean: Given a Free Hand” was published in conjunction with this exhibition (Dominique Carre, Editor)
  • People & Nature: One festival, Two passionsJune 5 - September 30, 2009La Gacilly Photo Festival 2009Created in 2004 by Jacques Roche, a man passionate about photography and art entrepreneur particularly attentive to the protection of Nature, People & Festival Photo Nature is preparing to inaugurate its 6th edition. Open to all, completely free, the Festival will once again transform the Breton village of La Gacilly in real art gallery en plein air. 200 large format photographs will be presented without interruption for four months from 5 June to 30 September 2009.Image: Spinnerstown, PA 2005 (050608-0194)
  • Three PhotographersJanuary 2009Washington, DCAlex S. MacLean was joined by two other photographers (Rob McDonald and Rosamond Purcell) at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery in Washington DC on December 13th to showcase their work and their recent publications. On display were images from OVER: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point.Image: Waltham, MA 2007 (070312-0093)Parking lots paved with impermeable materials quickly send runoff with surface contaminants into streams and sewers, and prevent rainfall infiltration and ground water recharge. In the summer they become heat islands, greatly increasing the surrounding temperatures.
  • Chaumont, FranceOVER: The American Landscape at the Tipping PointSeptember 12, 2008 - January 2009
  • On the EdgeAugust 20 - October 3, 2010
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