Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff: “Unforeseen” Reviewed in Washington City Paper
Washington City Paper Arresting Art: Unforeseen at VisArts By Stephanie Rudig July 9, 2025 The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is a site designed to safely store radioactive waste in underground caverns. In 1993, researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories explored the idea of warning messages that could be understood by people living several millennia from now. Though those alerts have yet to be posted at the site, the “Sandia message” serves as a point of inspiration for artists Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff’s multimedia exhibit [link id=’2569468′ text=’Unforeseen‘ esc_html=’false’]. Projections of video footage taken from around the U.S. over the course of a decade dance across the room, providing an eerie illumination for the sculptural installations and wall hangings. The work can’t be taken in all at once, the viewer must wait for dancing projector light to pass over and clarify what is on display. A metallic orb sits at the center of the room, surrounded by hybrid sculptures made of branches, deer hooves, and antlers hanging from the ceiling above and phrases from the oddly poetic Sandia message on the walls. Among these evocative lines is, “What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger,” forcing the viewer to imagine what exactly happened in this space, and who allowed this danger to come to pass. Combs frequently works with technology and video, hacking electronics and circuit boards to push them beyond their intended uses, and Cole McInturff usually traffics in organic materials for her sculptures; the collaboration between the pair yields a potent of urban and man-made objects colliding with the natural world that explore what our planet is coming to, what will remain, and how it will be remembered. Unforeseen runs through July 20 at VisArts, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville. Wednesday and Thursday, noon to 4 p.m.; Friday, noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. [link id=’2569468′ text='{{{homeurl_non_www}}}’ data-vars-click-url=’/event/chris-combs-ceci-cole-mcinturff-unforeseen/’]. Free. Read in Washington City Paper
Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff: “Unforeseen” Reviewed in DisCerning Eye
DisCerning Eye: Earth Tones Combs and Cole McInturff’s Nuclear Alarm By Mark Jenkins July 9, 2025 IN THEIR COLLABORATIONS, CHRIS COMBS AND CECI COLE MCINTURFF juxtapose technology and nature. Tech dominates — forebodingly — in the local duo’s VisArts collaboration, Unforeseen. The shadow-cloaked piece was inspired by the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Project, which stores radioactive nuclear detritus deep under southeastern New Mexico. That site was supposed to bear a huge warning label — the so-called “Sandia message,” named for the Sandia National Laboratory — that begins, “This is not a place of honor.” But 26 years after the facility opened, the cautionary text has yet to be deployed. So Combs and Cole McInturff made 15 banners, each with a fragment of the Sandia message, and hung them on the walls of the Common Ground Gallery. The placards surround a partial globe that is lighted only by reflections from snippets of black-and-white video beamed by four projectors. While most of the globe is cleanly machined, its bottom is ominously jagged. These imperfections mirror those of the twisted bark, branches, and hooves suspended above the broken orb. The dangling objects represent “figures from a distant future,” according to a gallery statement. The story told by the installation is both explicit and furtive. Viewers who don’t read the VisArts handout probably won’t get the Sandia-message reference, but they’ll certainly understand that Combs and Cole McInturff are depicting a potential environmental disaster. How does the world end? Not with a bang but a flicker. Chris Combs and Ceci Cole McInturff: Unforeseen Through July 20 at VisArts’ Common Ground Gallery, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville. {{{{homeurl_non_www}}}}. 301.315.8200. Read in DisCerning Eye on Substack