Enigmatic Stream: Richard Sexton
September 17, 2019 – April 5, 2020
Artist Talk: Thursday, Dec 12, 12-1pm

Enigmatic Stream features more than one hundred black-and-white photographs by Richard Sexton, accented by other materials drawn from and inspired by the Mississippi River, capturing the essence of a complicated and often mysterious section of the country’s largest waterway.

As it churns toward its terminus in southeastern Louisiana, the Mississippi River becomes a wide, muddy superhighway of activity, matched in might only by the megastructures of heavy industry that line its banks. The section of the river from Baton Rouge to New Orleans doubles as one of the most potent economic corridors in the country. For two decades, photographer Richard Sexton has explored this complicated region. Intrigued by juxtapositions between innovation and decay, the commercial and the residential, the manmade and the natural, he has documented in Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River a quintessentially American conundrum: our insatiable desire to exploit the lower Mississippi River’s potential while still leaving room for life along its banks.

The exhibition’s companion catalog features select photographs from Enigmatic Stream and essays by Sexton, curator John Lawrence, and author Paul Schneider.

Image: Richard Sexton – Cinclare Sugar Mill, Brusly, Louisiana, 2015