Curated by Lilly Wei
www.andrewrogers.org
Exhibition on View:
April 8 through May 17
Opening Reception:
Wednesday April 22, 6-8pm
Australian artist Andrew Rogers announces the first exhibition devoted to the entire
Rhythms of Life project, the world’s largest contemporary land art undertaking. From April 8 – May 13, the non-profit arts organization White Box (www.whiteboxny.org) will present Andrew Rogers: Odysseys and Sitings (1998 – 2008), a selection of 96 large-scale photographs of Rogers’s ground- breaking outdoor art project. Organized by Lilly Wei, a New York-based independent curator and critic, the exhibition will showcase aerial and satellite photographs of 32 sculptures created over a period of 10 years, marking the first time these images will be publicly displayed together. Also on view will be a looped, 40-minute film that documents the artist’s extraordinary process. Rogers has spent the last decade engaging over 5,000 people in 12 countries on five continents to create stone sculptures in deserts, fjords, gorges, national parks and on mountainous slopes. Often working for months on end, engaging hundreds of local workers and even the army of China to help him erect his visionary installations, Rogers engages the communities where his works are created, devising to build structures with local significance, and providing sustaining support to maintain the mammoth artworks. Following each project’s completion, Rogers photographs the work himself either from a helicopter 500 feet aloft or from a satellite stationemiles above ground.
The New York exhibition will coincide with the release of a large-format monograph: Andrew Rogers: Geoglyphs, Rhythms of Life, published by Charta and distributed by DAP (Distributed Art Publishers) in March 2009. The 464-page book features some 1,500 color images of all project sites, a first-person account by Rogers himself, and essays by noted art critics Eleanor Heartney and Lilly Wei.
Rhythms of Life forms a chain of 32 stone sculptures, or geoglyphs, positioned at 12 sites around the world. Constructed of earth and rocks, and following the contours of the natural landscape, Rogers’s land sculptures each measure up to 430,000 square feet in area, and range in height from three to 14 feet. Designed in conjunction with select architects and a team of local workers, the structures refer to the physical building blocks of history and civilization, while addressing the cycle of life and the interconnection of humanity throughout time and space.
Rogers began the project in Israel’s Arava Desert in 1998 and has since created artworks on five continents: in Israel, Chile, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Iceland, China, India, Turkey, Nepal, Slovakia, and the United States. At each site, the project is initiated with a celebration that draws on local customs, such as traditional dancing and singing in China, sharing of wine and coca in Chile or the sacrifice of a llama in Bolivia. To create the land sculptures, Rogers and his crews battle the elements, including freezing snow in Iceland, 110-degree heat in an Israeli desert and altitude of 14,000 feet in the Bolivian Andes.
Andrew Rogers is one of Australia’s most renowned sculptors. His works are included in private and public collections throughout in Australia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. Rhythms of Life is his most ambitious project to date.
For more information, see www.andrewrogers.com followed by WHITE BOX in collaboration with MoMAP (Museum of Modern Art Panzano).
