Tag Archives: Andy Goldsworthy

GALERIE LELONG: DIALOGUES — ANDY GOLDSWORTHY WITH BRETT LITTMAN

Who: Andy Goldsworthy, Brett Littman
What: Live and livestreamed discussion about new Andy Goldsworthy exhibition, “Red Flags”
Where: Galerie Lelong, 528 West Twenty-Sixth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., and Zoom
When: Saturday, April 23, free, 11:00 am (exhibition continues through May 7)
Why: In September 2020, Cheshire-born, Scotland-based environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy installed 109 hand-painted “Red Flags” in Rockefeller Center, replacing state flags and now featuring the color of the earth from each state. “Collectively I hope they will transcend borders,” he said when he started the project. “The closeness of one flagpole to another means that in certain winds the flags might overlap in a continuous flowing line. My hope is that these flags will be raised to mark a different kind of defense of the land. A work that talks of connection and not division.” He also compared the red earth to the blood running through our veins.

Installation view, Andy Goldsworthy, Red Flags, 2020 (courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York)

The installation has now been reconfigured as an indoor exhibit at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea — whittled down to fifty flags and accompanied by two related videos — where it will be on view through May 7. Goldsworthy’s work with natural materials is well documented, in such films as Thomas Riedelsheimer’s 2001 Rivers and Tides and 2016 Leaning into the Wind as well as Goldsworthy’s permanent Garden of Stones at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. “Red Flags may not have been conceived as a response to recent events, but it is now bound up with the pandemic, lockdown, division, and unrest,” Goldsworthy added back in September 2020. “However, I hope that the flags will be received in the same spirit with which all the red earths were collected — as a gesture of solidarity and support.”

In conjunction with Earth Day, the gallery is hosting a free conversation with Goldsworthy and Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum director Brett Littman, taking place in Chelsea and Zoom on April 23 at 11:00; admission is free in person and online. You can also check out a September 2020 virtual interview Goldsworthy did with the Brooklyn Rail about his flags project and career here.

CREATING GARDEN OF STONES: A CONVERSATION WITH ANDY GOLDSWORTHY AND JACK KLIGER

Andy Goldsworthy will discuss Garden of Stones, his permanent installation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Zoom talk (photo courtesy the Museum of Jewish Heritage)

Who: Andy Goldsworthy, Jack Kliger
What: Live Q&A
Where: Museum of Jewish Heritage Zoom
When: Sunday, December 6, free with RSVP, 11:00 am
Why: In the summer of 2003, British sculptor, land artist, and photographer Andy Goldsworthy installed Garden of Stones outdoors in the 4,150-square-foot garden at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, a collection of eighteen massive rocks that had small holes hollowed out in them in order to place dwarf oak saplings inside, planted by Holocaust survivors and members of their families at a special ceremony. The number eighteen is represented in Hebrew by the letters chet (ח‎) and yod (י‎), which form the word chai, which means “life.” The work offers a twist on the traditional Jewish cemetery, where people leave pebbles on headstones when visiting graves that are surrounded by growing grass, a kind of life out of death.

Goldsworthy, who interacts with the natural world like no other artist, has been profiled in such documentaries as Leaning into the Wind and Rivers and Tides, which reveal his deep connection to the earth and his often time-consuming process. On December 6 at 11:00 am, in “Creating Garden of Stones,” he will discuss his methods specifically relating to the project in a live Zoom talk and Q&A with Museum of Jewish Heritage president and CEO Jack Kliger. The ever-changing permanent installation takes on new meaning while the country struggles through a horrific health crisis that has led to more than 280,000 American deaths, with many funerals happening virtually instead of in person and cemetery visits few and far between. Admission is free with RSVP.

FRIEZE SCULPTURE AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER 2020

Beatriz Cortez’s Glacial Erratic glitters in front of Lena Henke’s R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red) (at left) in Rockefeller Center Plaza (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Ghada Amer, Beatriz Cortez, Andy Goldsworthy, Lena Henke, Camille Henrot, Thaddeus Mosley
What: Site-specific Frieze sculptures
Where: Rockefeller Center Plaza
When: Daily through October 2, free (free Brooklyn Rail artist talk with Andy Goldsworthy September 7 at 1:00)
Why: Last year the Frieze art fair inaugurated “Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center,” a group of site-specific works that complemented the art fair that has been held annually on Randall’s Island since 2012. With this year’s fair canceled because of the pandemic and relegated to online viewing only, the 2020 sophomore edition of “Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center” is a much-needed respite, especially for those who are not yet ready to go inside museums and galleries. The installation is again curated by Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum director Brett Littman — Noguchi’s Art Deco piece News has welcomed visitors to 50 Rockefeller Center Plaza since 1938 — and focuses on natural materials in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. In fact, the show was originally scheduled to open on Earth Day, April 22, but had to be rescheduled and reorganized because of the pandemic. “The projects for this year’s Frieze Sculpture deal with a range of issues including women’s suffrage, migration, urban planning, and ecology,” Littman said in a statement. “They are also grounded in the celebration of the natural and botanical worlds, and in some cases the artists use plants and flowers as part of their sculptures. Given our world’s current urgent concerns with ecological sustainability, climate change, and racial inequality — and the impact these issues have had in spreading Covid-19 — the idea of creating an outdoor sculpture installation within this discourse could not be more relevant.”

Thaddeus Mosley’s bronze trio melds with the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Greeting everyone at the Fifth Ave. entrance across from Sacks is ninety-four-year-old Pittsburgh-based self-taught artist Thaddeus Mosley’s freestanding bronze trio, Illusory Progression, True to Myth, and Rhizogenic Rhythms, three abstract totems inspired by the salvaged-timber pieces he’s created for decades; they look particularly striking when seen from behind the southwest corner, melding in with the towers of St. Pat’s in the distance. On either side of Channel Gardens is Egypt-born, New York-based artist Ghada Amer’s Women’s Qualities, plantings in the flower beds that form words describing women in a positive way while taking power over gender stereotypes that set impossible ideals, including such traits as Happy, Good Cook, Sexy, Strong, and Smart. In the middle of Channel Gardens is French artist Camille Henrot’s Inside Job, a sea-green bronze sculpture that recalls a breeching dolphin above two shark fins; the piece fits right in with the long, rectangular pools designed by Rene Paul Chambellan that contain fountainhead sculptures of Tritons, Nereids, and other mythic water creatures.

Last month, Rockefeller Center was home to “The Flag Project,” in which the 193 flags of the UN member nations were replaced by flags by established and emerging artists celebrating the resilience of New York City in the face of the current health crisis; for Frieze, Cheshire-born, Scotland-based environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy has installed Red Flags, 109 flags colored in earth samples taken from all fifty states. On September 7 at 1:00, in conjunction with his Frieze piece, Goldsworthy will take part in the Brooklyn Rail’s livestreamed discussion “The New Social Environment #124: Andy Goldsworthy with Jason Rosenfeld,” which will conclude with a poetry reading by Charles Theonia. “Red Flags may not have been conceived as a response to recent events, but it is now bound up with the pandemic, lockdown, division, and unrest,” Goldsworthy said in a statement. “However, I hope that the flags will be received in the same spirit with which all the red earths were collected — as a gesture of solidarity and support. At best, Red Flags will rise above individual states and become a single flowing work of canvas, earth, light, color, stillness, movement, and people.”

Sexy is just one of the words spelled out in the Channel Gardens flower beds in Ghada Amer’s Women’s Qualities (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the center of Rockefeller Plaza is El Salvador-born, LA-based artist Beatriz Cortez’s beguiling Glacial Erratic, a glittering, boulderlike construction made of steel frames and sheet metal that will age over the course of the exhibition, via weather and foot traffic, evoking ancient migration and the many forms of rock found across New York; the title refers to the geological term for rocks that have been transported by glacial ice until they find a home in a glacial valley. Next to that are German-born, New York-based artist Lena Henke’s playful, toylike R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red), a pair of distorted monster-face sculptures, one purple, one red, that are the same height as Henke and refer to Le Corbusier’s Modulor theory, his investigation into architecture, measurement, and the human body, as well as to Robert Moses’s controversial urban planning designs and several of the bas reliefs around Rockefeller Center. For a slideshow of all the Frieze works, go here.

LEANING INTO THE WIND — ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

(photo © Thomas Riedelsheime, all rights reserved)

LEANING INTO THE WIND — ANDY GOLDSWORTHY (Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2016)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Friday, March 9
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.leaningintothewind.com

Thomas Riedelsheimer follows up Rivers and Tides, his 2001 documentary about British artist Andy Goldsworthy, with Leaning into the Wind — Andy Goldsworthy, another fascinating journey with the peripatetic sculptor who uses the world as his canvas, Earth’s natural treasures as his materials. Goldsworthy finds simple pleasures in a beam of light in a cave, a tree fresh with ripe avocados, and walking barefoot on a homemade clay floor. Just as rain starts, he lies down on the street and lets the water pour over him; after a moment, he gets up, leaving a fading, dry outline of his body behind. He plucks leaves and lines them up an outdoor staircase until they form a lovely colored strip that passersby observe as if telling them which way to go. He carves out human shapes in stone to form chambers people can lie in. He has an “intense relationship” with the color yellow. He operates a jackhammer in a quarry. He works with flower petals, mud, twigs, fallen trees, huge rocks — basically, whatever he encounters on his travels can become part of his oeuvre. “I’m still just trying to make sense of the world,” he says. He is like a kid in a candy store as he takes a difficult path among a row of not-too-sturdy bushes or marvels at ants making their way across a forest passage, climbs trees in order to cast a shadow on the grass, and trudges through a stream to get to a favorite log. Many of his spur-of-the-moment works are temporary, to be seen only by himself and his assistant, his daughter Holly, unless captured on film, although plenty of art institutions do hold his work: His Garden of Stones is on permanent view at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Through it all, he rarely laughs or even smiles; he’s rather serious, concerned about the impermanence of all living things. In one moving scene, he decides not to cut into a mountaintop for fear of upsetting its balance and beauty.

Neither an interventionist nor a land artist, the sixty-one-year-old Goldsworthy, who worked on a farm as a teenager, is often at a loss for words when describing his art, hesitating, pausing, and not finishing sentences. “There are a lot of contradictions in what I make,” he says, struggling with his thoughts. “In a sense, I quite, uh, what am I trying to say? It’s a really difficult thing to explain.” He shares some details about himself — he’s been married twice and has five children, between the ages of four and twenty-seven — but he’d much rather talk about how we’re all part of nature and nature is part of us. Revisiting his university days in Morecambe, England, he stops by a trio of human-shaped chambers carved into the rock. “You feel the human presence here, and whether that’s death or life — I think it’s both, and I think that the chambers that I’ve made, for people to stand in, to lay in, are places to contain memory, the human presence, and that will inevitably address the ideas of death and the absence.” Cinematographer, editor, and director Riedelsheimer (The Colour of Yearning, Lhasa and the Spirit of Tibet), whose son, Felix, served as his assistant on the film, has to stay on his toes, never knowing which way Goldsworthy will go or what he will do when the urge hits him. At one point, the artist sneaks behind a bush in a city and shakes it as people walking by wonder what is going on; he then pops out as if nothing strange had just happened. The many lush images are accompanied by a gorgeous soundtrack by legendary composer and guitarist Fred Frith, who also scored Rivers and Tides. At the beginning of that film, Goldsworthy said, “Art for me is a form of nourishment. I need the land. I need it.” Sixteen years later, the land is still nourishing him, and Andy Goldsworthy is still nourishing us, showing us how to experience our natural environment in a whole new way.