Plein Air is a group exhibition that explores shifting ideas of western landscape, painting, and fieldwork. Traditional plein air painting, which typically involves painting outdoors in a single sitting to capture a vista in a certain quality of light, is taken as a point of departure to consider the ways in which humans use, observe, record, and commune with the land. In this exhibition, the practice of plein air painting is considered in the context of land surveying and settling, public and private space, multidisciplinary onsite research, art history, and the embodied experience of being there. Outdoor painting from observation is approached as ground truth—as bearing witness—a way to experience, process, and understand a range of physical landscapes, and our relationship to them.

The exhibition includes work by Susanna Battin, Esteban Cabeza de Baca, iris yirei hu, KB Jones, Hillary Mushkin, Sterling Wells, and Paula Wilson. The exhibition was organized by guest curator Aurora Tang for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson. An expanded version will be on view in the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery from July 21 to December 10, 2023.