In Dept. of Water and Power, Julian Whatley reframes the iconic Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River as both sublime vision and bureaucratic cautionary tale. Executed in a limited, spectral palette of chromium oxide green, phthalocyanine hues, lead white, and bone black, the painting shimmers with both natural grandeur and a sense of ambient toxicity. This visual ambiguity is key to Whatley’s “Peripheral Space” ideology, where meaning radiates outward from the familiar into zones of disruption and critical inquiry. The work lures viewers in with its beauty, only to reveal a simmering narrative of ecological exploitation, industrial control, and deferred catastrophe. It is a portal not just to a mythic landscape, but to the contested, precarious systems that undergird it.