November 8, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Catherine Clark Gallery
248 Utah Street
San Francisco, CA

Catharine Clark Gallery is pleased to present Vanishing Finish (2024) and Borrowed Time (2023–24) by LigoranoReese, on view in EXiT from November 8, 2025 through January 3, 2026.

Vanishing Finish comprises 49 cyanotype prints documenting endangered keystone species from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

A selection of 34 prints is presented here, featuring land animals, insects, sea life, plants, and bacteria—organisms at the apex of their habitats whose loss would decimate entire ecosystems. This installation follows the work’s inclusion in Sympoiesis: Co-Creating Sense of Place at the University of Wyoming Art Museum (April 26–October 18, 2025).

Both projects address humanity’s impact on the natural world amid an accelerating climate crisis. The cyanotype process, invented in the 1840s, has served botanists and photographers as a vital tool for documenting nature. Pioneering practitioners including Anna Atkins, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Sir John Herschel employed the technique to capture botanical specimens with scientific rigor and haunting beauty. The process requires coating paper with a light-sensitive solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, which appears dark green when wet and oxidizes to Prussian blue upon drying. Unlike conventional photography, cyanotypes demand direct contact between subject and sensitized surface—light must be blocked for the image to emerge.

LigoranoReese’s Vanishing Finish draws inspiration from Nora Ligorano’s conservation work with the original Brooklyn Bridge blueprints and the 2018 New York Public Library exhibition Blueprints: The Pioneering Photographs of Anna Atkins. The artists source imagery primarily from 19th-century naturalist illustrations in the Smithsonian’s Biodiversity Heritage Library, creating digital negatives that are exposed onto delicate 30-gram Japanese Sekishu tissue using UV light. The resulting prints possess a translucent, ephemeral quality that reinforces the work’s themes of fragility and impermanence.

Catherine Clark Gallery
Ligorano Reese

Last Call – DemocracyICED – October 15, 2025

National Mall, Washington, DC
On October 15, 2025 we are returning to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to install our latest temporary monument Last Call – DemocracyICED

The sculpture measures 17 ft x 5 feet high and weighs over 3,000 pounds, carved in ice. Democracy will melt away and disappear throughout the day.

Join us on site at 3rd Street NW between Madison and Jefferson Drives, NW or virtually.

We are also streaming the event from start to finish on our website http://meltedaway.com and social media and on a number of other sites.

The sculpture launches at 12 Noon, EST with a press conference featuring: Rev. William H. Lamar IV, Tariq Habash, Senator Nina Turner, Rob Weisman and others.

We are working with UP IN ARMS who commissioned us to make artist driven actions focused on the militarization of the U.S. in the lead up to the midterm elections. Other artists include Robin Bell, Shepard Fairey, JR, and Pedro Reyes.

Pre-publication Announcement
Coming this November.

Deception

Deception – a new PureProducts USA edition of fragrance distilled from melted Democracy in an edition of 100.

The first 50 bottles are available here at a special pre-publication price of $101/each.

Deception is the summation of falsehoods, fake media, deep fakes, social media and disinformation bringing a great society to its knees.

100 fl. ml / 3.7 oz

Recent Acquisitions

The University of Wyoming Museum of Art has acquired Borrowed Time (6 lenticular wall clocks, edition 6/9). For more information.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has acquired Untitled, 2001, 33 x 36 inches, edition of 65 as part of the Brand X Archive of over 400 screen prints. For more information.

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts has acquired Listen to the Material for the W. Van Allen Clark Library collection. (Generous gift of Wanda Kownacki.) For more information.

Coming Soon – Catharine Clark Gallery
November 8, 2025

Vanishing Finish, edition of 2 + 1 EP, 49 cyanotype prints on Sekishu 30 grm Japanese paper of vulnerable and endangered keystone species. Many of these prints were made at the Westbeth Print Studio, NYC. For more information.