Tag: earth art

Brie Ruais at Albertz Benda Gallery

Brie Ruais’s signature approach to art involves manipulating a 130 lb pile (equivalent to the artist’s weight) of clay into flat rings of ceramic sculpture textured with finger and footprints.  Here, she varies her usual circular form with this knot-shaped piece in her current show at Albertz Benda Gallery.  The artist has called her work ‘Earth Art that takes place in the studio;’ in this sculpture, the relationship between the body and landscape speaks to interconnectedness.  (On view in Chelsea through Jan 22nd.)

Brie Ruais, Intertwining, 130lbs times two (Thief Knot), glazed and pigmented stoneware, hardware, 62 x 124 x 6 inches, 2021.

Rena Detrixhe at Spencer Brownstone Gallery

Finely sifted red soil imported from Oklahoma becomes a patterned carpet in Rena Detrixhe’s first New York solo show at Spencer Brownstone Gallery.  Using a trowel to smooth down the dirt, then imprinting it with modified shoe soles, the Kansas-based artist considers the symbolic value attached to land in the mid-west while alluding to mankind’s impact on it.  (On view on the Lower East Side through June 16th).

Rena Detrixhe, Red Dirt Rug, sifted red soil, 20 x 10 feet, 2019.

James Turrell at Pace Gallery

Since the 70s, James Turrell has been converting the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in Arizona, into a series of chambers for viewing earth’s atmosphere and celestial phenomena beyond.  At Pace Gallery’s 57th St space, he’s exhibiting models of structures based on light phenomena explored at Roden, including this one, which suggests a merger of a UFO and a pyramid.  (Through April 20th).  

James Turrell, Missed Approach, cast, plaster and wood, 1990.