Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin: Richard Long. Berlin Circle

Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

Richard Long. Berlin Circle

until 31 July 2011

The first solo show in Germany of works by the artist to be held in a major museum in almost ten years. The focus and inspiration for this exhibition is formed by the eponymous work ‘Berlin Circle’, dating from 1996, which features in the Sammlung Marx.

‘My art is in the nature of things’,  Richard Long

A new work by the artist, the ‘River Avon Mud Circle’, will also be specially created for the show in the museum.  This exhibition also pays tribute to the long-term commitment to the Nationalgalerie at Hamburger Bahnhof on the part of the collector Erich Marx, who will be celebrating his 90th birthday this spring.

Richard Long (*1945, Bristol, England) is one of the leading protagonists of ‘Land Art’, along with Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria and Robert Smithson. Coinciding with the first ecological movements in the USA and Europe, Land Art was first created in the 1960s by artists working concurrently but separately from each other, as a critical reaction to the classical genre of sculpture and the commercial art market. The transient and site-specific works, hewn in and from nature, were first unveiled to the public in 1968 in the ‘Earthworks’ exhibition at the Dwan Gallery in New York. A year later, in 1969, Gerry Schum coined the term ‘Land Art’ in his television programme of the same name, and it has been used ever since.

Richard Long uses the movement of his own body, the act of rambling and walking in the countryside as both the gauge and medium for his art. One of his earliest and most well-known works, ‘A Line Made by Walking’, from 1967, consisted in him pacing up and down a field in a straight line so often that a line was drawn in the grass, which the artist then captured on film in the form of a photograph. For over 40 years now, subsequent larger works have been created outdoors all over the world, in England, Canada, Japan and Bolivia: composed of large stone circles or lines made of wood. These temporary works are then documented in photographs. In contrast to such companions of his as Heizer and Smithson, Long’s works do not amount to an intervention in nature, executed in a series of great gestures, for he instead works with material already at hand.

Since he started out as an artist, Long has, however, also shown works in interior spaces. Here too, sculptures are created with archetypal forms of wood or stone: ovals, lines or circles. Long explains his choice of form as follows: ‘I  like to use the symmetry of patterns between time, between places and time, between distance and time, between stones and distance, between time and stones. I choose lines and circles because they do the job.’

It is befitting then that the main work in the Hamburger Bahnhof exhibition, ‘Berlin Circle’, is a circle of stone, twelve metres in diameter, laid out on the floor. ‘Berlin Circle’ is an important work in the Sammlung Marx and was first unveiled and installed by the artist for the opening of the Hamburger Bahnhof in 1996. It serves as a thematic focal point in today’s exhibition, emphasising one of the artist’s core forms: the circle. Five other floor pieces are also on display in the historical hall, along with films by and on the artist.

‘My art is in the nature of things’ says Long, referring to the topicality of his works. By being consistently set in places where the nature of things appears in the works, they also throw light on questions in today’s discourse on the relationality, performativeness, transgressions and spatiality of art.

Curator: Prof. Dr. Eugen Blume – Curatorial Assistance: Dr. Katharina Schlüter

Publication “Richard Long. Berlin Circle“ , Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

 

Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

Sammlungspräsentation zum Thema

Land Art

Parallel zur Ausstellung Richard Long: Berlin Circle zeigt die Nationalgalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin eine Sammlungspräsentation zum Thema Land Art.

In den späten 1960er Jahren entwickelte sich im Kontext der Minimal Art und der Prozess Kunst das Interesse für eine Kunst außerhalb des Ateliers und der Kunstinstitutionen. Für die Land Art, im amerikanischen Sprachraum auch Earthworks genannt, sind die Arbeiten im Außenraum kennzeichnend. Der Begriff Landschaft umgreift dabei Stadt- ebenso wie Industrie- und Naturlandschaften.

Obwohl die Arbeiten der Land Art alle ortsspezifisch sind, sind die skulpturalen Umsetzungen unterschiedlichster Art: Erdaushebungen bei Michael Heizer, Betonröhren bei Nancy Holt, eine Spur im Rasen bei Richard Long, Klang bei Dennis Oppenheim, oder das flüchtige, unermittelbare Erlebnis der Wanderung bei Hamish Fulton. Oft unterliegen die Interventionen in der Landschaft einem anhaltenden Wandlungsprozess, denn sie sind Einwirkungen von Wind und Wetter ausgesetzt.

Gezeigt werden Objekte, Zeichnungen, Filme, Fotografien, Pläne, und Drucksachen aus den Beständen der Nationalgalerie, des Kupferstichkabinetts und der Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin sowie aus der Sammlung Marzona und Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. Es sind Werke von Joseph Beuys, Marinus Boezem, Stanley Brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Douglas Huebler, Barry Le Va, Richard Long, Walter De Maria, Dennis Oppenheim, Gerry Schum und Robert Smithson.

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Dutch Landscapes, Exhibition Archive, Land Art, Richard Long, Sculpture