Andy Goldsworthy, Des Moines Art Center - Three Cairns

Andy Goldsworthy: Three Cairns
Des Moines Art Center
July 20 – October 13, 2002

A major exhibition of work by internationally known British artist Andy Goldsworthy will open at the Des Moines Art Center. Comprised of photographs, sculpture, and temporary site-specific work, the show will stretch through three of the Art Center’s exhibition spaces and also include a major stone sculpture outside the Art Center in Greenwood Park.

The largest project that Andy Goldsworthy has undertaken in the western hemisphere, Three Cairns encompasses three temporary sculptures, three permanent sculptures, and three exhibitions at three museums. Three Cairns was initiated by the Des Moines Art Center, while partnerships with the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York expand the project nationwide.

In realizing Three Cairns, Andy Goldsworthy made temporary sculptures as well as permanent sculptures that form a virtual line across the North American continent. All the work is based on the cairn form — recalling the prehistoric cone-shaped stone structures still found in much of Great Britain. Andy Goldsworthy, known for his artwork made of natural materials, has been using this motif since the 1980s. The principal ideas of the project are to link the coasts of America with the country’s center and to highlight the distinct environmental traits of the Eastern, Western, and Central United States.

The backbone of the exhibition will be series of large-scale color photographs depicting the temporary cairns that Andy Goldsworthy created in the Midwest and on the two coasts. The groundwork for these photographs began in March 2001 when Andy Goldsworthy built the first of the temporary cairns on a reconstructed prairie site near Grinnell, Iowa. This five-foot high cairn was then photographed for more than a year in different climatic conditions—as the prairie grasses grew, as the sculpture was covered in snow, and later as the prairie was subjected to a controlled burn. Subsequently, Andy Goldsworthy built temporary cairns in the tidal zones on the East and West coasts which were photographed as the incoming waters destroyed the work. The exhibition brings together all three series of large-scale panoramic photographs—over 35 in all, each six-feet wide —that compare the rising tides of water on the East and West coasts with the rising “tide” of grass on the Midwestern prairie.

The site-specific work in the gallery will also highlight the themes of East versus West, and coast versus center. A large screen made of Iowa cattails pinned together with thorns will divide the main gallery into two equal halves, east and west, while a fern “drawing”—a serpentine line made from bracken collected across the country—will extend for more than 100 feet along a gallery wall. Also included in the exhibition, placed in the Art Center’s lobby, will be one of Andy Goldsworthy’s leaf sculptures, a cornucopia-shaped object created from Chestnut leaves folded and pinned together.

The entire project was inspired by the architecture of the Des Moines Art Center’s original building by Eliel Saarinen. Andy Goldsworthy chose Iowa limestone as the material for the permanent sculptures to echo the Lannon stone cladding used by Saarinen; the scale of the permanent sculpture is also closely related to the building. In addition, the Art Center’s permanent sculpture, while arranged on an east-west axis to reference the east and west coast locations, is sited on a north-south axis in line with an entrance to the Art Center.

Andy Goldsworthy: Three Cairns was initiated by the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, and organized in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York. The project was conceived by Susan Lubowsky Talbott, director of the Des Moines Art Center, and Chris Gilbert, associate curator; it is curated with Hugh M. Davies, David C. Copley director at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and Dede Young, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Neuberger Museum of Art. The temporary cairn on the Iowa prairie was commissioned by the Des Moines Art Center in collaboration with the Faulconer Gallery and the Center for Prairie Studies at Grinnell College.

At the Art Center, major funding for Andy Goldsworthy: Three Cairns was provided by The Jacqueline and Myron Blank Exhibition Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds. Additional funding comes from the Bank of America Foundation; The Bright Foundation; and The Meier Bernstein Foundation. Brian Clark and Associates; Manatts, Inc.; Screen Scape Studios; Star Equipment, Ltd.; Taylor Construction Group; and the Weber Stone Company provided in-kind support.

DES MOINES ART CENTER
4700 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50312-2099
www.desmoinesartcenter.org