There’s Something Toxic About Megan Bickel’s Landscapes

Megan Bickel's Orgonon exhibition at Institute 193 in Lexington, Kentucky, uses digitally collaged photographs and layered paint to explore how new technologies disrupt knowledge and visual perception. The reviewer describes the 12 recent paintings as conveying a vibrant, disquieting sense of living now, amid war, environmental destruction and unease with artificial intelligence. The title work's reflective fabric, photographed in grass, was mistaken by the reviewer for a Photoshop illusion, which the reviewer finds unsettling. According to the gallery statement, Bickel's research assesses how Google Vision API would affect climate reporting. The show runs through July 27.