ART SPACE ECOLOGY
Black Rose Books, Montreal, Canada
15.10.2018 - 31.12.2020
Art Space Ecology: Two Views--Twenty Interviews embraces the international context of today’s art making and, through the medium of interviews, encourages readers to engage directly with nature-focused creators and their artistic processes. The twenty artists, though diverse in backgrounds and methods, all produce works that are either embedded in the environment or that document our ever-changing landscapes. In these interviews, Grande explores the motivations that inspire artists to use the natural world as their canvas and how their works explore the intersections of art, space, and the environment, raising questions about our relationship with the landscapes themselves. An engaging introduction by Edward Lucie-Smith, English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster, sets the stage for these artists to share about the artistic processes of their works.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Edward Lucie-Smith;
Introduction by John K. Grande;
Paul Walde - Requiem for a Glacier
Jason deCaires Taylor - Rising Waters
Jan-Erik Andersson - Form Follows Fun
Milos Sejn - Walking Past Babylon
Buster Simpson - It’s About Habitat
Peter Hutchinson - With Nature in Mind
Joshua Portway & Lise Autogena - Environments in Conflict
Chris Booth - Sculpture in Ecolution
The Harrisons - How Big is Here?
Pilar Ovalle - Nature In Place
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas – Best to Love Bugs
David Maisel - Tapping Topography
Alan Sonfist - Culture Nature
David Mach - DISRUPTOR
Haesim Kim - Contemplating Nature
NILS-UDO - Towards Nature
Gyenis Tibor - Photo Actionism
Dennis Oppenheim - Putting the Public Back into Public Art
Robert Polidori - Ars Memoria
Henrique Oliveira - Being and Form
BLACK ROSE BOOKS
Amazon
"Grande offers an eclectic global perspective in the book, whether it's Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater sculptures in the Canary Islands or Milos Sejn's Solar Mountain, a site for contemplation and renewal in the Czech Republic. . . . Timely, and the conversations engaging."
– Galleries West
"No significant movement in art remains independent of social and historical forces. Nor can it remain independent of surrounding related artistic impulses, which may not be pursuing the same ends. These are things that emerge clearly from John K. Grande’s fascinating series of interviews with artists working in this field. Ecological art and Land Art have a much longer history than most experts on contemporary culture are willing to suppose.... Other parallels can be found in the historical record of non-European cultures, especially in China and Japan, where landscape occupies the central position in art that Europe, since the Greeks, has accorded to the human figure."
– Art & Museum
"Whatever the medium under consideration, whether sculpture, organic interventions, performance art, body art, or technically complex installations, the discussions he choreographs in his new books explore and reveal the often mysterious motivations behind the maker’s making and unearths their intentions in a gentle yet dramatic manner. This book demonstrates clearly that in the end, or even more so, in the beginning, the natural world is our original and implicit canvas.
By examining the powerful intersections between art, technology and biology itself, he manages to reveal the deep questions that drive each artist forward. Perhaps the biggest question, and the most commonly recurring one: what is the most appropriate relationship we have or should have to the landscape? Not as something we live on, but as a place we should live with."
– CRITICSATLARGE.CA
This book is a field guide for artists working with nature, or addressing issues of the natural world in performance, video, painting, sculpture, installation or body art. The natural world becomes a canvas for exploring the intersections of art, space, and the environment. Questions about our relationship with land are raised by the dynamic interactivity and dialogues between John K. Grande and the artists: object and environment, artist and audience, society and nature.
– Arte.Es Magazine, Spain
"John Grande's international renown as a critic, curator and cultural commentator is hard earned and well deserved. His own observations, as well as the important artists he shares with us in this collection of twenty inter-views, is all about our active engagement in the natural environment. The delicate balance and proportional harmony so clearly in evidence in his questions and the artist's answers often feels like a carefully crafted dance between the heart and the head."
– Critics at Large
ART SPACE ECOLOGY
SOLAR MOUNTAIN