City

Michael Heizer, City, 1970-2022, photo by Eric Piasecki, © Michael Heizer / Triple Aught Foundation

In a remote valley of central eastern Nevada, a complex of shaped landmasses and monolithic structures is thought to be the largest sculpture in the world. Composed of rocks, compacted dirt, and concrete, a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, Michael Heizer’s City is a vast work of Land Art.

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Santiago Arau. Territorios

Santiago Arau, Puebla desde el Iztaccíhuatl, 2019, color digital print, image courtesy of Museo Amparo
Santiago Arau, Puebla desde el Iztaccíhuatl, 2016, color digital print, image courtesy of Museo Amparo

For seven years, a man explored the length, width, and height of the territory of Mexico. He traveled 33,302 kilometers, documenting the borders, cities, mountains, and volcanoes that shape the country. The explorer, Santiago Arau, is a photographer and filmmaker whose project, Territorios, is the subject of an exhibition at the Museo Amparo in Puebla.

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Tatiana Bilbao Estudio

Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Villa Ventura, 2011; photo by Iwan Baan, courtesy of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

At the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, The Architect’s Studio – Tatiana Bilbao Estudio is the third installment in a series of monographic architecture exhibitions that explore globalization, sustainability, and social challenges. With drawings, collages, models, and materials, the exhibition reveals the philosophies and processes of the Mexico City-based architecture team.

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FOR FOREST

Max Peintner, Die ungebrochene Anziehungskraft der Natur, 1970/71, pencil drawing. © Max Peintner
Max Peintner, Die ungebrochene Anziehungskraft der Natur, 1970/71, pencil drawing. © Max Peintner

In 1970, the Austrian artist and architect Max Peintner imagined a small forest contained within a stadium in a drawing titled The Unending Attraction of Nature. In it, a sprawling, smoky, industrial city has subsumed the natural world, and thousands of spectators pack the stadium to look at a few hundred trees.

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Orbital Reflector

Trevor Paglen, Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass, 2008, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; © Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen, Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass, 2008, C-Print, 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of Trevor Paglen, Metro Pictures, New York; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; © Trevor Paglen

At 10:34 a.m. on December 3, 2018, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Two hours later, 350 miles above Earth’s surface, it released 64 satellites into orbit for the largest satellite launch in US history. One of those, Orbital Reflector, will be the first “purely artistic” object in space.

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Lines (57° 59′N, 7° 16’W)

Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho, Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W), 2018-19, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre, image courtesy of Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho
Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho, Lines (57° 59′N, 7° 16’W), 2018-19, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre, image courtesy of Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho

On the island of North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides archipelago on the northwest coast of Scotland, a site-specific installation shows the impact of future climate change with a visual reference to rising sea levels.

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Surrounded Islands

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, documentary photograph of Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83; photo by Wolfgang Volz, © Christo 1983
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, documentary photograph of Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83; photo by Wolfgang Volz, © Christo 1983

In May of 1983, eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay were surrounded with 6.5 million square feet of floating pink fabric. It was an incredibly vibrant spectacle – green islands, pink fabric, turquoise water, and blue skies – realized by the conceptual and environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The project, Surrounded Islands, is the subject of an exhibition now at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).

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ANOTHER PLACE and ANOTHER TIME

Antony Gormley, ANOTHER PLACE, 1997, image © Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley, ANOTHER PLACE, 1997, image © Antony Gormley

In 1997, in Cuxhaven, Germany, the British sculptor Antony Gormley installed ANOTHER PLACE, a sculpture comprised of 100 life-sized iron figures, along the coast between the North Sea and the mouth of the Elbe River. The figures were spread 2.5 kilometers down the coast and a kilometer out to sea, facing the horizon and becoming submerged with the tides each day in September and October of that year.

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The London Mastaba

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), 2016-2018, photo by Wolfgang Volz
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), 2016-2018, photo by Wolfgang Volz

In London’s Hyde Park, a monumental form floating on the Serpentine Lake is a feat of engineering and a spectacle many years in the making. Titled The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), it is a temporary installation by the conceptual and environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

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