An installation view of Fossil Remains reveals Sogard’s methodical staging of found objects and their photographic counterparts, blurring the line between scientific display and contemporary art.

Someone who glanced through the door at Carol Sogard’s Finch Lane exhibit wouldn’t be entirely wrong to assume that what they were seeing was not art, but science. Fossil Remains deliberately partakes of both activities. Sogard’s extraordinarily good-looking and impeccably well-organized exhibition reminds us that all true knowledge begins in science, and that science, which is powered by ignorance and the humble desire to learn and understand, begins just like art, with observation. That, and taxonomy. Only because we identify and name things can we divide the natural world into categories of being: animal, mineral, vegetable, good and bad. What Sogard, a rare creative genius in our midst, has taken on is nothing less than acknowledging our influence and impact on those categories, which are not as remote as we like to think. By observing the evidence of our presence among the signs of nature, she holds a mirror up to our behavior and shows us ourselves. Paradoxically, she makes this process into art by her determination to harmonize the two realms and show how the natural and human spheres overlap.

There are three steps in Sogard’s presentation—or perhaps we should say her simulated publication—of her research. In the first, box-like trays of initially disorganized samples are laid out on tables in the center of the room. Signs on them request that we “Please Do Not Touch Specimens.” In a museum these might be under glass, the vitrine or display case being ways in which precious objects are made visually accessible without putting them at risk. By omitting that protection, Sogard makes her chosen objects much more accessible, and takes a risk. Anyone who has shown art will know how futile such signs are in the presence of the actively curious, even as the objects—some of these found in nature and some of them made or adjusted by the artist—are essentially irreplaceable.

In the second tier, photographs of the objects are framed for presentation on the wall. Here they display preliminary sorting: “Collected Fragments—Northern, South-Central UT, 2025” and “Leaves, Scraps, and a Green Balloon—VT-MI-UT 2023-5.” Where the actual finds were available for examination and testing, here we’ve moved on to the point where they’ve become visual resources only.

The third degree of progress sees the photographs organized into pairs. Now unframed, they march along the wall like so many pages in a book, ready to be assembled and stitched together. Here the categories are more specific, revealing, and even more, if rather incongruously, humorous. Paradoxically, this also makes them more approachable. “White Things Found In Urban Environments,” or “Round, Silver, Sage, Sea & Land Assortment, 2021-23.” Climaxing this portion of the exhibit, and presented alone on the gallery’s end wall, is the mock-up of a title page for Sogard’s implied book (which calls to mind the Salt Lake City Library’s treasured possession, the Elephant Folio copy of Audubon’s The Birds of America).

By this point, the viewer of Fossil Remains has probably crossed a conceptual threshold. What looked initially like a dry, possibly boring collection of objects removed from their contexts for display to specialists has become an initially playful examination of a serious, and arguably deadly truth. What Carol Sogard has done is to update the classic image of nature, like those collections put together in previous centuries that can still be seen in both natural history and cultural museums, all over the civilized world. Recently, critical opinion has actually turned against such visions of the world, which are now seen to be Eurocentric at best and flawed by the racism and economic and cultural preconceptions of their makers. Yet they remain on view, with a few sentences added to raise these points. Sogard, on the other hand, has fabricated a representation, an installation that looks forward to a more accurate and not entirely welcome, yet necessary image—one that reveals how there is almost nowhere on Earth that is not contaminated by the discarded and cluttered remains of human consumption. In a phrase, human visitors come to consume the sights and resources of a place, then leave behind empty containers and half-eaten contents as evidence of another form of consumption.

Photographic “plates” document Sogard’s finds as if for publication, adopting the visual language of scientific atlases to catalogue evidence of human presence embedded in the natural world.

It would be sad enough if all this meant was the loss of the Wild, the pristine natural order that once greeted not only tourists, but even the careful occupants of land, sea, and air. But Sogard wants to remind us that our environment is shared by other life forms, which are also affected. Plants absorb our chemicals through the soil and air. Animals become trapped in cast-off objects they have no knowledge of or defense against. Microplastics are found at the deepest depths of the oceans, while our nuclear devices hurtle outward through space.

The art of Carol Sogard goes further than this, of course. In fact, it is the latest body of work to do what the avant-garde has attempted to do for over a century, which is to shock the audience and defy the status quo. As Fossil Remains opens, we do not yet know whether the anti-scientific attitudes so often seen abroad in America will continue their recent advances, or whether they will be turned back. Right now, decades of progress in some of the most critical areas of public policy, like the environment and health care to name just two, are being savaged by activists who proceed on the basis of their own prejudices, rather than the modest efforts made by those who strive to first learn the best way forward. Sogard’s exhibition recalls others that have charted the decline and disappearance of species that have become endangered or have gone extinct. And she opens the mental space to imagine how such a fate might overcome human arrogance and thoughtlessness. Let’s imagine a future where our trash and the by-products of our industries are actually hard to find. Another alternative is the one where no one can see the evidence she has collected, because no one is left to look for it.

Presented as the implied title page of an imagined atlas, this work anchors Fossil Remains in the visual language of nineteenth-century scientific publications, framing Sogard’s collected evidence as both record and warning.

Finally, it should be noted that the downsides of Carol Sogard’s factual implications are real, but she does not let them spoil the rewards of her art or make its contemplation depressing. Among the opportunities she presents instead are the pleasures of looking through her finds, pondering their identities and admiring their presentations. Spend enough time with these, and the exhibition ultimately becomes the present moment, the possible turning point between then and what’s next. The best artists and artworks always have this quality: they divide the world along the lines of what went before and what came after. And between those poles, the art creates an eternal present.

Fossil Remains, Finch Lane Gallery, Salt Lake City, through Feb. 20. Opening Reception & Salt Lake Gallery Stroll: Fri, Jan 16, 6-9pm.

All images courtesy of the author.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.