- Mike Curran
Opening Reception, Saturday, April 4, 1pm - 4pm
Limited free seating is available on a roundtrip chartered bus from New York City for the April 4th opening. Reservations are required and can be made on this by calling +1 845-758-7598 or emailing Mary Rozell at mrozell@bard.edu.
Artists: Alice Aycock, David Horvitz, Ana Mendieta, Dennis Oppenheim, Athena Tacha
In 1984, twenty-two artists were invited to propose sculptures for an open field and its surrounding woods on the Bard College campus. Entitled Land Marks, the ensuing exhibition at the college’s former Edith C. Blum Art Institute (1981–92) presented drawings and scale models submitted by the participating artists. Although curator Linda Weintraub intended to realize a number of the proposals, none were ever constructed at Bard. However, the Center for Curatorial Studies was built on this same field soon after.
Prospective Fields: Revisiting Land Marks materializes this history with an exhibition that reconvenes the original renderings, models, and written proposals of Alice Aycock, Ana Mendieta, Dennis Oppenheim, and Athena Tacha. This grouping reflects the range of propositions in Land Marks, which varied in function, material, and footprint, demonstrating distinctive approaches to sculpture made outside a studio setting at the time. Aycock’s complex of concrete chambers, for instance, would have connected underground, while Tacha aimed to recontour the entire field by imposing agriculture-like terracing.
Despite their formal differences, the proposals share social and ecological concerns common to the 1970s and ’80s. They engage advancements in engineering and communications technologies, the still looming threat of nuclear war, mounting ecological disasters, and evolving environmental movements. The fears and fascinations of this unstable time color the proposals, from Oppenheim’s depictions of molecular explosions to Mendieta’s Neolithic-inspired earthwork that criticizes the idea of progress altogether. Prospective Fields considers this collection of unrealized proposals as open propositions in our current era of existential threat.
Adding to this conversation is a new commission by conceptual artist David Horvitz responding to Land Marks. A graduate of the Bard MFA program whose credits include a 2012 project on the grounds of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Horvitz adds to a lineage of interventions on this field.
This exhibition is supported by The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator.
