Watermarks opens tonight at the WUHO Gallery at 7pm. If you come, make sure to bring your wellies. Architect Jennifer Bonner filled the Hollywood gallery floor with water in order to provoke a discussion of crisis, drought, and watershed geographies. For those  on the east coast who weathered Irene, the question of flooded environments is not an abstraction, but a critical reality. For West Coast types, the installation heightens the awareness of arid landscape ecology and potential future scenarios.

Watermarks will only be at WUHO for one week, so make sure you come see this unusual and provocative installation.

Opening | September 7th, 2011 – 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Exhibition | September 7th through September 11th, 2011
WUHO | 6518 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

The Watermarks installation simulates Venice’s Acqua Alta, documents resiliency across the American landscape, and explores representational techniques for water fluctuation.

In Venice, Italy high tides annually flood San Marco’s Piazza throughout late fall and early winter.  During this reoccurring phenomenon, the city deploys elevated walkways at common pedestrian routes allowing foot traffic to carry on regardless of thirty centimeters of standing water. Souvenir shops sell disposable plastic shoe covers allowing tourists to wade through the public water spectacle where new urban scenarios unfold within the inundated square.

By flooding the gallery floor in Hollywood, visitors are asked to join in dialogue about a far-away Italian land, yet imagine potential future scenarios for Southern California. Rising water levels in arid landscapes and droughts in saturated domains question our assumptions about regional climates. Three watershed geographies are examined and thirty-six flooded towns are watermarked.