Ranalli is an environmental artist in the tradition of Robert Smithson and Richard Long, the British artist known for walking works. Brown rightly calls Ranalli a conceptual artist; much of his art is made to vanish, and so it seems more idea than object (although his photographic records are part and parcel with the art). But something in the label “conceptual art’’ implies intellectual gamesmanship, and there’s not a trace of that here. Indeed, this exhibit is a love letter to the seashore.
Love is never easy, though. It’s rife with change and loss. The exhibit begins with the black-and-white photographic triptych “Every Mark I Make . . .,’’ documenting the fate of two columns of clam shells Ranalli laid at the water’s edge. In the first image, they glow in the damp sand. In the last, they have nearly vanished beneath the tide. The artist has written in pencil below the images: “Every mark I make . . . seems to fade away.’’
These works record the artist’s search for patterns and the marks he steadfastly leaves behind, despite the knowledge that time and tide vanquish all. Yet he persists; every trace, every pattern, represents Ranalli’s effort to grasp the unknowable, to gain a foothold while leaning into the relentless headwind that is nature’s mystery.
“Seven Daily Stones’’ features seven spare, square photos of sea-smoothed rocks, each with a notch in it. “I thought if I could find a stone with a hole in it each day on my walk for seven days — that would be significant,’’ reads the text below the photos. The mere statement of his quest somehow attests to its ultimate insignificance.
