At the 42 St-Bryant Park station, Lionel Cruet’s profusion of highly tinted and saturated images recedes toward a vanishing point in his photographic exhibition "#seen." The title refers to internet vocabulary indicating a message or image has been viewed by a receiver, conjuring how images are mediated, circulated, and witnessed. 

For Cruet, perspective is both formal technique and conceptual stance. By formally representing the recession of images into the blackness of the lightboxes, Cruet engages with how public and personal perspectives are molded through the dissemination of images. The series begins with a black and white image of Cruet’s hand extended, holding a dried sea urchin found off the Puerto Rican shore. As the images shrink, Cruet weaves in public domain images culled from NASA and NOA archives of his native Puerto Rico and heat mapping of the oceans. This shift from the personal relationship with the environment to the scientific understanding of larger climate trends asks viewers to contend with their understanding of tropical environments. Cruet grapples with the photographic medium through the seemingly endless recession of images to portray a nuanced yet inevitably incomplete picture.  

“The way we understand climate, the environment, identity, and culture is shaped by multiple perspectives, opinions, and–at times–the lack of information,” says artist Lionel Cruet. “When it comes to the natural world, particularly those spaces that have been manipulated by human intervention for centuries, we must ask: What more is there to learn? Are our perspectives enough? What still needs to be revisited?”