Summon the Sea! Contemporary Artists and Moby Dick

Summon the Sea! Contemporary Artists and Moby Dick examines the work of six contemporary artists—Corey Arnold, Guy Ben-Ner, Patty Chang, Tristin Lowe, Allan Sekula, and Frank Stella—who act as epic storytellers as they respond to, challenge, and celebrate the allegories presented in Melville’s literary classic through large-scale sculpture, photography, prints, and video made since 1985. These artists were selected for the epic nature of their own searching: the bodies of work on view represent a similar tome-like status in each artist’s oeuvre—they were either painstakingly created over multiple years or were executed on an epic scale warranted by a novel like Moby-Dick. These artists’ work encourages dialogue about ecology and nature, economics and industry, human psychology and emotion.