Early on in this slow but captivating exhibition, the artist films herself walking into a thick wall of pine trees. Every direction is blocked off, but the camera keeps turning, endlessly looking for a route through. With the crunch of the branches, it has the feel of ASMR until the relentless movement gives way to something more threatening and unnerving.
Nature dictates the parameters of the work.
Nature dictates the parameters of the work, a form of art putting her at odds with the Land artists she is so often lazily heaped together with. Rather than rearranging the environment, her ambiguous, exploratory works were investigating how we perceive and sense our surroundings.
The videos that make up ‘Utah Sequence’ – thought lost for years – survey a desolate desert landscape from a profoundly human, though deeply detached, perspective. For an artist so active in the 1960, 70s and 80s (she died in 2014), it’s astounding how her art-making processes and environmental concerns are so pointedly relevant today.
The exhibition ends with a vast projection of a film about her ‘Sun Tunnels’, four concrete cylinders that also sit on the horizon line of the Utah desert. It’s immersive, haunting and oddly joyful. ★★★★★
- Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Kreuzberg, through Jul 21, details.
