Andy Goldsworthy at Storm King Art Center

Stone and Clay Sculptures, Photographs, Drawings, Ephemeral Works and Storm King Wall On View May 22-November 15

“One of the most engaging artists to emerge from Great Britain in the last decade” (Art in America), sculptor Andy Goldsworthy has been internationally acclaimed for the elemental artworks he has created outdoors, in settings from Adelaide, Australia, to the North Pole.

On view from May 22 through November 15, 2000, Andy Goldsworthy at Storm King Art Center has developed from three years of the artist’s experiences in the Art Center’s landscape. The central work created during that time is a monumental commissioned sculpture, Storm King Wall: a serpentine dry wall, 2,278 feet long, made of 1,579 tons of field stones. Incorporating the remains of a fallen-down farm wall that Goldsworthy discovered on the site, the sculpture crosses over old farm roads, snakes around maple and oak trees, plunges into a pond—and then seems to re-emerge on the pond’s opposite bank, to continue across a field to the New York State Thruway.

The artist’s proposal drawings for Storm King Wall as well as his photographs (some of them as much as five feet long) of ephemeral works created over the past three years at the Art Center will mingle in the exhibition with new, site-specific work created in and around the museum building.

A stone enclosure reminiscent of the works in Goldsworthy’s 100 Sheepfolds project in Cumbria, England flows from the building’s patio through the building’s French doors and into a first-floor gallery, bridging inside and outside. Another first-floor gallery is filled with an installation of gray clay: an artwork that changed as the material dried. Initially, the installation looked much like a still-wet cement floor. As the surface cracked, a form reminiscent of Storm King Wall emerged like an embedded memory, which seems to point the way out of the museum building toward the woods.

The artist also created two large balls of stacked and knitted sticks, one within the museum building and one directly outside, visible through the window. Although they are the same size, the one inside crowds the gallery, leaving little or no room for viewers to edge by, while the one outside seems smaller, as it sits surrounded by tall trees and mountain vistas. Finally, as is his habit, Goldsworthy created ephemeral works, which are dotted throughout the Art Center’s grounds.