Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan – Blue Sky with World Trade Center

Agnes Denes, American

Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan – Blue Sky with World Trade Center, 1982

In 1982 Agnes Denes took it upon herself to change the landscape of lower Manhattan. She decided to change the ordinary sculpture work she did to be a moving and interactive installation for the concrete jungle that was lower Manhattan. Denes planted a wheat-field over a landfill that previously added to the degradation from Manhattan. She wanted to show the shocking juxtaposition between the skyscrapers and the simple wheat-field. The wheat-field is something that can sustain human life, and Manhattan is the center of the modern world. The twin towers in the background also play into the idea of how as much as our world progresses, there is always tragedy that exists amongst the progress. Denes took it upon herself to include the peoples who live and work in lower Manhattan to participate in this eco-art. It poses the question that in today’s world what seems like it would be more human – Skyscrapers or a wheat-field? Label by Annabel Bentley

Carbon Sink

Chris Drury, United Kingdom

Carbon Sink, 2011

This piece is crafted from trees that fell in the Rocky Mountains after being killed by pine beetles. Due to rises in temperature, pine beetles are now able to survive the winter, allowing them to reproduce rapidly at an uncontrolled rate. Drury’s artwork draws attention to this phenomenon while also attributing global warming to rising carbon emissions from both coal and oil companies. The piece points out the role that institutions play in supporting these companies, especially since the piece itself is situated on institutional grounds as part of the University of Wyoming Art Museum sculpture program. Above, one can see pieces of coal sandwiching the dead logs. Both the coal and the logs are arranged in a spiral, whirlpool-like form, seemingly suggesting that the constant cycle of rising emissions and rising temperatures around the world will have irreversible negative effects. Label by Grace Moser

Revival Field plant and field Study (aka Carulescens Cross)

Mel Chin, American, born 1951

Revival Field plant and field Study (aka Carulescens Cross), 2015

In his ongoing project of Revival Field, Mel Chin made a holistic approach to create an environmental solution to transform industrial waste into sustainable artwork, by utilizing specific plants to extract heavy metals from contaminated soil. Before the project started in 1991, the soil at a Superfund site in Saint Paul, Minnesota was loaded with cadmium and other toxins. With two years of what he calls “a green remedy,” Chin was able to absorb most of the heavy metals into the plant’s stems and leaves, with an economically feasible and environmentally sustainable methods. Label by Yifei He