Installation view of Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, May 27 – September 3, 2012 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photo by Brian Forrest
Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 is the first large-scale exhibition to deal broadly with the 1960s emergence of land art, a movement characterized by the impulse to use earth as an artistic medium and locate works in remote sites, far from familiar art contexts. Including work by over eighty artists and projects from United Kingdom, Japan, Israel, Iceland, Eastern and Northern Europe, as well as North and South America, the exhibition provides an overview that highlights early years of untested artistic experimentation and concludes in the mid-1970s, before land art became a fully institutionalized genre. Rather than romanticizing notions of a return to nature or an escape from culture, Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 reveals the complexity of the movement’s social and political engagement with the historical conditions of its time. The exhibition exposes land art as a media practice as much as a sculptural one, focusing on the extent to which language, photography, film, and television were integral to the genre’s formation.
Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 was organized in collaboration with Haus der Kunst, Munich.
Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 was organized by Philipp Kaiser, Senior Curator, and Miwon Kwon, Professor of Art History, UCLA.