Photographer, filmmaker, and sculptor Algis Kemezys was inspired to make a series of surreally altered
pieces of environmental art by an incident that would have left many people too bereft to have done much
Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) join forces in AISTHESIS to document the work and the research of two leading
figures of Environmental Art.
He was part
of the environmental art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with artists such as Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta - Clark, which focused on taking the art scene beyond sterile gallery spaces, and, as Wines described, putting art where you would least expect it.
Zoe Leonard, at Paula Cooper well before her Analogues, creatively reverses the
idea of environmental art, evoking and using nature but ultimately leaving the human artist in control.
Meanwhile, land art / earth works and other
forms of environmental art have permitted artists to express their feelings for nature's grandeur and immensities.
The
rise of Environmental Art as a movement is closely tied to those other artistic tendencies and involved many of the same players.
After his breakthrough Time Landscape of New York, Sonfist gradually built a reputation as a
father of the environmental art movement, presenting a new and unique harmony between ecology and artistry.
Jane Trowell,
of environmental arts campaign group Platform, said: «BP is trying to repair its tarnished reputation and buy our approval by associating itself with culturally important institutions like Tate.»
From ephemeral works that erode with time or emphasize the timelessness of nature, to works making a more political statement, it seems that the general
role of environmental art is to prompt contemplation about the greater meaning of human engagement in nature, in relation to its cyclic processes.
Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) join forces until November 2014 in AISTHESIS, an exhibition supported by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Panza Archive in Mendrisio, to document the work and the research of two leading
figures of Environmental Art, Robert Irwin and James Turrell.
As a
pioneer of environmental art, Planet Earth is his medium, and his creations reflect his profound connection to nature, landscape and geology.