Mary Mattingly’s photographs of moonlit gardens turn the Robert Mann gallery into a hallucinatory hothouse. Vivid and wild with masses of real, handmade, and computer-generated flowers, Mattingly’s compact landscapes are at once otherworldly—sci-fi at its most seductive—and as familiar as natural-history dioramas. But they’re not just pretty pictures. The artist has long been known for work (including site-specific sculpture) that takes on environmental issues with engaging subtlety. Here, the gardens often appear to be sinking or submerged as rising seas threaten to turn earthly Edens into swampland. In one image, translucent, jewel-like jellyfish caps float like a squadron of U.F.O.s above a darkened field of flowers, invaders from our own mutating planet.
—Vince Aletti