Art for the Third Millennium – The Agnes Denes exhibition at LUMU

I’d read about what is probably Denes’s best known work – ‘Wheatfield – A Confrontation.’ In 1982, the artist took it upon herself to sow a two-acre area with wheat. What’s so special about that? Well, the two-acre area was a landfill site in downtown Manhattan, just a few blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center. Seeing the photos which documented the progress of this thought-provoking project really highlighted the scale of Denes passion. And of course the project itself served as a powerful paradox. As Denes puts it, “Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept, it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities.”

The exhibit which struck me most was a series of photographs entitled ‘Human Dust’; although it was the text which really grabbed my attention. It started, “He was an artist. He died of a heart attack,” before describing the deceased’s entire life in statistics; how many times he fell in love, how many dreams he had, how many he fulfilled. And the list went on….and on. Although it didn’t focus on landscape or urban planning, as so much of Denes’s work does, it relied heavily on the exploration of mathematics and time; one of the things that the artist likes to investigate in her work.

The works took a number of different forms too; there were beautiful watercolors on silk, photographs, x-rays, and 3D models to name but a few. And how could I forget the simply named ‘Bird Project’ which was a photographic selection of migratory bird colonies. Sagaciously, Denes had used these images to demonstrate “the problems of co-existence, group mentality, action and reaction, distrust, changing value systems – survival itself the mega cities of the future.”

Walking from room to room, I was able to understand Denes’s vision for creating a new world view, just as the exhibition’s title promised and the artist herself encapsulates this vision so well, explaining, “I map human evolution, create social structures and metaphors for our time.”

This topical exhibition is open to all every Tuesday to Sunday between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. There will be opportunities to take guided tours of the works on November 8^th at 6 p.m.

Open Tue. – Sun. 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.