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Agnes Denes : Projects for Public SpacesA RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION BY THIS PIONEER ENVIRONMENTAL AND CONCEPTUAL ARTIST Curated by Dan Mills September 2 - November 6, 2004Opening Reception:
Tuesday September 14 at 6:00 p.m. 
Crystal Fort-Masterplan: Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, 2000. Original design of a full size fortress made of glass, to be built along the Waterlinie as a major tourist attraction to create revenues for the reclamation plans laid out in the 25 year, 85 kilometer Masterplan. (120' x 120' x 60') archival digital print from original rendering, 24" x 27 3/4" >Agnes Denes
Recognized as a pioneer of environmental art, Denes has addressed ecological, cultural and social issues in her work-- often on a monumental scale. As a pioneer of environmental art, Denes has created numerous global projects including “Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule" in Finland, a massive earthwork and reclamation project that reaches 400 years into the future to benefit future generations, creating in effect the first "manmade" virgin forest. For "Wheatfield - a Confrontation", Denes planted and harvested two acres of wheat in downtown Manhattan in a work that Mills describes as "addressing human values and misplaced priorities." In her 25-year master plan for "The Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie" "Denes proposes bringing into prominence and environmentally stable the 100-kilometer-long defense line dotted with 70 forts built from the 16th-to the mid-19th centuries in the center region of the Netherlands," Mills said. In the fully illustrated catalogue which accompanies the exhibition, Eleanor Heartney describes the way Denes's work investigates ideas across disciplines, investigating the physical and social sciences, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, art history, poetry and music. "She stresses interconnections between specialized bodies of knowledge which often seem to exist in not-so-splendid isolation" said Heartney. "In pursuing her goals, Denes has planted time capsules which safeguard key precepts of human wisdom for future generations. She has infused the rural into the urban, planting a wheat field beneath the shadow of the World Trade Towers. She has drawn on the metaphor of the ship as vessel for human preservation, and sheep and birds as models for human behavior. She has infused the pyramid with social meaning, making it serve as a symbol of human dilemmas and predicaments. For over three decades, she has persevered in cultivating hope despite much justification for the contrary." Denes has had more than 350 solo and group exhibitions, a major retrospective at Cornell University, and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale and Documenta. A research fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T.; and DAAD in Berlin, Denes has lectured extensively at universities in the U.S. and abroad and participated in global conferences. She has written four books and holds an honorary doctorate in fine arts. She has completed commissions in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East and has received numerous awards, including four National Endowment Fellowships, the McDermott Award from M.I.T.; the Watson Award from Carnegie Mellon U.; and the Rome Prize, from the American Academy in Rome in 1998. Agnes Denes will present a lecture titled: "Art for the Third Millennium - Creating a New World View", at the museum on October 7th at 6:30 pm. The Chelsea Art Museum exhibition received major funding from Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro. Additional support was provided by Charles J. Tanenbaum, Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state Agency, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Richard Florsheim Foundation, and the Office of Development and Association for the Arts at Bucknell University. |
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