Double Take: Mel Chin & Elizabeth Turk

This exhibition presents works from these two award winners of the MacArthur Fellowship—sometimes referred to as a “genius grant”—in a variety of techniques and media, including wood, stone, aluminum, water, and sound. Chin and Turk’s work selected for this exhibition focuses on sculpture dealing primarily with the natural world.

Environmental issues have been central to Mel Chin’s work for many years. Most notably is his 1990 Revival Field, a pioneering project in “green remediation,” which uses plants to extract toxic metals from soil. Two pieces tied to this ongoing project are included in the exhibition: Revival Field diorama and Revival Ramp etching. Themes of revival and recovery are often present in Chin’s work, including many shown at Meijer Gardens.

Elizabeth Turk is also inspired by the natural world, most recently in her Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction series that brings light to extinct and endangered birds through a series of totemic Sound Columns. These sculptures visualize the voices of lost or threatened birds. Her Evaporated River installation similarly gives form to an absence within nature, here showing the diminished water that used to flow freely through our nation’s riverbeds.

Together, the art of Mel Chin and Elizabeth Turk provides new takes on important issues of the day, including environmental hazards, endangered species, memorialization, and lost or hidden histories.

Born in Houston, Texas, Mel Chin has become known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works requiring multidisciplinary, collaborative teamwork and those enlisting science as an aesthetic component to developing complex ideas.

Chin is one of the artists featured in the first year of the ongoing PBS series Art of the 21st Century. He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary degrees, including the MacArthur Fellowship and election to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.

A native Californian, Elizabeth Turk is known for marble sculpture and through ET Projects immersive art events. Currently, she splits time between a studio in Santa Ana, California, and New York City. She is a MacArthur Fellow, an Annalee & Barnett Newman Foundation recipient, and a Smithsonian Artist Fellow, among other awards.

Turk received her Master of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture, in 1994, and her Bachelor of Arts from Scripps College, Claremont, California, in 1983.

View the Double Take Gallery Guide

Double Take: Mel Chin & Elizabeth Turk is made possible by:

The Meijer Foundation
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Foundation
Botanic and Sculpture Societies of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
The Michigan Arts and Culture Council, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.