There was a time, when artists created lightning fields and giant stone spirals, placed oversized installations and massive structures in salt lakes or deserts. Hans Haackes Grass grows from 1969 is a testimony of this epoch, a small hillock of meadow that is at the entrance of Haus der Kunst in Munich and begins the exhibition Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974. With nearly 200 works by more than 100 artists, the show curated by Philipp Kaiser, is a comprehensive overview of an artistic position that rejected the institutional limits of the art system. From the mid-70ties onwards, the common ground of Land Art began to diverge in distinvt movements such as conceptual art, happenings, performance or Arte Povera.
Wether experimenting with earth or stones, investigating regional landscapes or the globe itself, artists like Richard Long and the neo avant-garde group Superstudio understood the planet as their medium and made their work part of it. Photographs and models, installations and videos produced by the artists are displayed in the exhibition. The most astonishing aspect of the curators’ view is the plurality of locations and mindsets. Thus the show makes evident, that Land art was not only a North American but an international phenomenon, with protagonists all over the world.
Text: Sandra Hofmeister
Photo: Hrein Fridfinsson, House Project, 1974, Sixteen color photographs and two texts
Photographs: 7 7/8 × 11 7/16 in. (20 × 29 cm) each; texts: 11 5/8 × 8 1/4 in. (29.5 × 21 cm) each Moderna Museet, Stockholm
„Ends of the Earth . Land Art to 1974", until 20th January 2013 at Haus der Kunst, Munich (www.hausderkunst.de), Catalogue: Prestel, 39,95 Euro.
