land art

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Art Nature

In Sand and Stone, Jon Foreman Sculpts Hypnotic Gradients and Organic Motifs

Nature’s subtle irregularities and variations are fodder for Jon Foreman (previously). Using found leaves, stones, and sand, the Wales-based artist assembles swirling gradients and organic motifs that radiate across forest floors and beaches. He precisely arranges each composition by size and color, relying on basic geometric principles to transform a humble material and unconventional backdrop into stunning artworks. Considering the constructions last just a short time before they’re blown or washed away, head to Foreman’s Instagram to see them in pristine condition.

 

Art Design Nature

Moss, Pine Bark, and Roots Camouflage Tiny Refuges Among the Wild Swedish Forests and Farmland

Artist and architect Ulf Mejergren (previously) continues his interest in cozy, outdoor constructions with a new series titled Farm Art. Collaborating with farmer Robert Pettersson, Mejergren built several site-specific structures from materials found around Pettersson’s property in Grödinge, Sweden.

For “Pine Bark Hut,” the pair layered thick, gnarly wood into a slender cabin camouflaged between two trees, a space first used for hunting and then storing tools. Similarly, “Root Hut” entwines gathered branches with the existing roots to create a small, sand pit enclosure nestled beneath the forest, while the circular “Moss Hut” stands 4.5 meters tall among the trees. The latter work “stems from the farmers’ hunting interest,” Mejergren writes. “For many years, he has put food at certain points in the forests so wild boars come to feed there. The problem is they are like bulldozers in the forests, looking for insects and roots in the soil, so they have dug up moss from the forest floor and left them scattered in big droves.” Cloaked in the remaining lichen, the structure is a disguised refuge among the wild landscape.

Other works in Farm Art are more aesthetically driven, like the vivid “Sunset.” Made of dandelion heads at full bloom, the spherical form appears to glow in a field of weeds and wildflowers. Find the full series on Mejergren’s site and Instagram.

 

Art

Wander Through a Geometric Field of 448 Sculptures in Jim Denevan’s ‘Self Similar’

For artist Jim Denevan, a paramount element of his creative practice centers on building experiences within landscapes through art and temporary events. Known for his large-scale land works that shape expanses of sand into precise geometries (previously), he allows time, weather, and changing tides to gradually reform the compositions back into natural terrain. Opening today in the capital of the U.A.E., Denevan’s expansive “Self Similar” is part of Manar Abu Dhabi, a new initiative celebrating public art and illuminating the city’s landmarks and vistas with light.

Bordered by the Arabian Sea on Abu Dhabi’s Fahid Island, visitors can reach the installation via a bridge that aligns with its geometry. “As I draw and shape these forms, an invitation is made; it emerges. An ‘entering into’ takes place,” he says of the creative process, mirroring the experience of wandering through the composition. The piece’s 19 rings and 448 pyramids span nearly a square kilometer, and at the work’s highest point, it reaches 27 meters tall.

Denevan, who is also a chef, founded Outstanding in the Field in 1999, inviting people to meet and dine at temporary tables in stunning locations before packing up and leaving the location just as it was. “In the tables he sets and the land artworks he creates, there is an element of organic impermanence at play,” says a statement on his site. The size and scale of his installations range from small compositions on beaches to city-size interventions that stretch miles, each in response to a specific site.

Manar Abu Dhabi continues through January 30, 2024, and you can explore more on Denevan’s website. You might also enjoy this music video from earlier this year, directed by Owen Brown of CTRL5 and featuring the band ARIZONA, which centers around a 90,000-square-foot installation by Denevan in a dry riverbed in the American Southwest.

Manar Abu Dhabi continues through January 30, 2024, and you can explore more on the artist’s website.

 

 

Art Books

A New Book Celebrates the Groundbreaking Women Who Changed Land Art

As conceptual art emerged in the 1960s as a dominant movement, more artists turned their attentions toward atypical materials and spaces. Using wood, steel, plants, peat moss, and other organic matter became commonplace in the genre known as land art, which included works made directly on the earth or with natural materials brought into the gallery.

As with most of art history, land art has generally been dominated by men, although a new book published by DelMonico offers a corresponding, if not corrective, narrative. Groundswell: The Women of Land Art is a 256-page volume that encompasses a range of works by renowned artists like Ana Mendieta, Nancy Holt, and Agnes Dean, to name a few.

On the cover is Lita Albuquerque’s “Spine of the Earth,” an ephemeral creation of concentric circles laid in the Mojave Desert in 1980, with projects like Meg Webster’s verdant “Moss Bed, Queen” and Patricia Johanson’s winding “Fair Park Lagoon” inside its pages. Given the fleeting nature and live components of many land-art pieces, the book is both a celebration of the women artists working in the genre and a necessary resource for documenting such groundbreaking and transient additions to the canon.

Groundswell is available on Bookshop.

 

Art

Bridges and Walls Defy Gravity in Cornelia Konrads’ Atmospheric Site-Specific Installations

A bridge in the middle of a Montana forest appears eternally suspended mid-collapse, and a wooden dock curls up out of the water in just a couple of artist Cornelia Konrads’ site-specific interventions (previously). Using found materials like driftwood in the towering “tourbillon” or tapping into the regional vernacular like the ceramic tiles and stone in “refuge,” the artist re-interprets existing spaces by embracing the tension between harmony and chaos in nature.

Konrads’ installations feature an interplay between permanence and weightlessness, as structures such as bridges, houses, and walls appear to defy gravity. In “La folie des folies (3 The Match),” for example, existing classical statues of Hippomedes and Atalanta appear to playfully lob marble pots across a lawn at one another. And in her most recent work, “fluchtweg / escape route,” a stone wall curls aside to open a footpath, transforming into an inviting gateway rather than a barrier.

The works often visually remark on a specific location, such as “refuge,” which incorporates “an ancient dry stone wall along an old link road between France and Spain, frequently used by refugees during the past centuries,” while “bridge” suspends local lodgepole pine and weathered barn boards over a forested ravine.

Explore more of Konrads’ land art and installations on her website.

 

Art

Working on Ice Floes, David Popa Renders Ephemeral Portraits that Fracture and Split into the Sea

After a decade of living in Finland, David Popa has established a fruitful creative collaboration that would be impossible in his native New York City. The artist frequently works on land and sea, particularly the fractured ice floes of the Baltic, to render large-scale portraits and figurative murals that draw connections between the ephemerality of human life and the environment. Whether depicting his wife or newborn child in intimate renderings, he highlights the inevitability of change as time passes, seasons transition, and the climate warms.

Popa’s use of such unconventional canvases emerged from a desire for adventure and child-like play, when he put on a drysuit, climbed onto his paddleboard, and ventured out to a frozen mass. “These spaces were so mysterious and so interesting,” the artist says. “I derived an enormous amount of inspiration from going out into these ethereal spots.” After taking some drone photos of the areas, he began working, spraying the contours of a cheek or lip onto the icy matter.

 

Because many of his works are destined to melt and be reabsorbed, Popa opts for natural materials like white chalk from the Champagne region, ochres from France and Italy, and powdered charcoal he makes himself—the latter also plays a small role in purifying the water, leaving it cleaner than the artist found it. Most pieces take between three and six hours to complete, and his work time is dependent on the weather, temperature, and condition of the sea. “The charcoal will sink into the ice and disappear from a very dark shade to a medium shade, so it has to be created very quickly and documented. No to mention the work on the ice will just crack and drift away completely, or the next day it will snow and be completely covered,” he says. “I’m really battling the elements.”

Popa embraces this cyclical process and the lack of control over the fate of his works, which he preserves only through stunning aerial photos. Broadly reflecting themes of existence and time, some of his murals, like “Prometheus” and “Remnants of the Past,” also emphasize shifts in aesthetic impulses. Mimicking Greek sculptures, the works appear “washed up on shore,” drawing connections between antiquity and today and the differences in how we perceive beauty.

Popa will release a new limited-edition print next month, and you can follow that release on his site and Instagram. (via Yatzer)