Agnes Denes

Projects For Public Spaces

Jan. 26 – Apr. 6, 2003 

Main Gallery 

Organized by the Samek Art Gallery. Curated by Dan Mills

A programming series is planned, including lectures by Denes, about Denes's work and on what public art can be. An illustrated four-color catalogue with essay by Eleanor Heartney will be published. Exhibition will travel nationally.

Exhibition Brief: Exhibition will include proposal drawings and other images, models, and documentation of important visionary public projects she has created from 1968 until the present. Agnes Denes has investigated the physical and social sciences, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, art history, poetry and music and transformed her explorations into unique works of visual art. A pioneer of environmental art, she has addressed ecological, cultural and social issues in her work-- often on a monumental scale. In recent years, Denes has focused more and more on environmental projects. Her art is an art of ideas-and her ideas are extraordinary This exhibition will focus on Denes's public projects, both envisioned and realized. Drawings, proposals, and documentation of projects, including Tree Mountain-A living Time Capsule, 1996, Finland; Wheatfield-A confrontation; 1982, in lower Manhattan; and Proposed Masterplan-Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, 2001, a twenty-five year masterplan to bring into prominence and environmentally sustainable the 100 km.long defense line dotted with 70 forests built from the 16th to the mid-19th centuries in the center region of the Netherlands, including wildlife preserves, windmills and a crystal/glass fort.

Denes has had over 300 solo and group exhibitions, including Documenta VI in Kassel (1977), two Venice Biennales (1978, 1980), and a major retrospective at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (1992), and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York. She has completed commissions in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. She has received numerous awards, including four National Endowment Awards and the Rome Prize, from the American Academy in Rome in 1998. Denes is a Research Fellow at the Studio For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T. and the Courant Institute at N.Y.U. Denes has lectured extensively at universities in the U.S. and abroad and participated in global conferences. She lives and works in New York.