The challenge is always to use materials in a new and different way, and make them convey meaning and portray form in a manner that has not previously been seen.

Monthly Archives: August 2017

Vogue Italia: A Conversation with Andrew Rogers

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Arte, Intervista ad Andrew Rogers

È l’artista dei primati Andew Rogers: il suo “Rhythms of Life” è una costellazione di 51 massicce sculture (dette geoglifi) disseminate nei continenti. Land Art che abbraccia tutto il globo e che si può vedere da un satellite a 770 km sopra di noi. Un progetto che racconta di un gigantismo senza precedenti e che ha coinvolto 7’500 persone in 16 nazioni, dall’esercito cinese ai Masai.

Ho incontrato Rogers durante il suo viaggio europeo – Biennale di Venezia e Art Basel comprese, ovvio – prima che tornasse nella sua Australia.

Come ha scelto le locations per “Rhythms of Life”?
Ognuna è significativa per storia e patrimonio. Molte hanno una topografia di grande interesse: nell’Arava Desert (Israele) il sito si trova a 122 m sotto il livello del mare; il Deserto di Atacama (Cile) è il più arido del pianeta; in Nepal il geoglifo “Knot” (una sorta di labirinto) è stato creato nella gola più profonda al mondo, mentre in Antartide abbiamo utilizzato la morena dei ghiacciai.

In che modo le comunità locali vengono coinvolte?
La maggior parte delle migliaia di persone che hanno partecipato a “Rhythms of Life” non è mai stata coinvolta nel creare arte. Il processo di creazione è essenziale per il progetto. Si lavora fianco a fianco e in intesa con gli altri per qualcosa che inizialmente è solo un concetto astratto, con la consapevolezza che quello che si crea è storia futura. Uomini, donne e gruppi etnici operano insieme. Le sculture sono un regalo alla comunità che ne è orgogliosa e si occupa di mantenerle nel tempo.

Gli Himba della Namibia sono considerati gli ultimi veri nomadi al mondo; adorano i loro antenati con un fuoco sacro che viene sempre tenuto acceso. La scultura “Sacred Fire” è diventata un luogo di celebrazioni.

I suoi geoglifi sono quindi luoghi che accolgono eventi.
Un altro aspetto che contraddistingue “Rhythms of Life” è l’attenzione ai rituali delle comunità coinvolte, alle mitologie e credenze. Spesso i partecipanti – che vivono in luoghi remoti e dal clima estremo – aderiscono a qualche forma di sciamanesimo con rituali che si realizzano prima e dopo la costruzione delle sculture. In Cile abbiamo bevuto un miscuglio di vino e foglie di coca tritate. In Sri Lanka si è tenuta una processione di danze popolari e acrobati con gong e piatti e i sacerdoti hanno bollito il latte per propiziarsi la buona sorte.

Ci parli delle sue sculture “We Are” esposte fino al 26 novembre a Venezia a Palazzo Mora.
Venezia è un centro di civilizzazione e storia antica. Era e continua a essere un luogo d’intersezione. Le sculture riflettono sulla diversità degli individui, ma anche sull’importanza di un dialogo che consideri storia e patrimonio e che le nostre azioni diventeranno storia nel futuro. Come le mie sculture di Land Art, anche “We Are” parla di globalizzazione e umanità condivisa. Entrambi i lavori sono metafora della relazione imprescindibile fra singolo e comunità e spingono i limiti in termine di forma e sfida nella costruzione. Entrambi dovrebbero agire da catalizzatori per la visione di un mondo migliore.

La sua “Unfurling Energy” è presente alla “Expo 2017. Future Energy” ad Astana (Kazakhstan). 
La mia scultura è stata scelta per la sua forma fluida, ispirata in parte all’energia del vento; infatti, considerando le condizioni del clima di Astana, è in grado di resistere al forte vento, alla neve, al ghiaccio e a temperature rigidissime. Una sfida ingegneristica che ha richiesto grande maestria artigianale e attenzione alla qualità del metallo e delle saldature. La produzione è stata attentamente supervisionata da LERA – Leslie E. Robertson Associates, gli stessi ingegneri della ricostruzione del World Trade Centre.
Anche “Unfurling Energy” mette in evidenza il nostro ruolo di custodi, con responsabilità verso chi ci circonda e chi arriverà dopo di noi. Il presente sarà riflesso nel futuro.

Cosa bolle in pentola?
Sto lavorando a progetti per la Turchia e il Perù.
Come dire: un instancabile e visionario globe-trotter dell’arte.
By Amanda Prada

August 7, 2017 12:45 PM
Click here for the full article:
http://www.vogue.it/l-uomo-vogue/news/2017/08/07/arte-intervista-ad-andrew-rogers/

Works take a walk in the park

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Sydney Morning Herald Weekend, 5-6 August 2017

Page 15

Artists from around Australia will feature in a free exhibition , Sculpture at Barangaroo, which opens at Barangaroo Reserve today.

 

Andrew Rogers’ bronze sculpture Folded 3 (pictured) is among the 14 works on display, with others including a large vinyl and aluminium kangaroo by Richard Tipping and Indigenous artwork by Adam King of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.

 

The inner city exhibition, held in partnership with Sculpture by the Sea, will finish on 20 August.  Though the park is open 24 hours a day, organisers have encouraged visitors to see the works between 8am and 6pm.

http://www.barangaroo.com/see-and-do/whats-on/sculpture-at-barangaroo/

Art in America Online 01August 2017

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Steppe Forward: Art and Tech at Expo 2017 Astana

By Lilly Wei

In a bid for a more distinctive international profile, Kazakhstan is hosting Expo 2017 through September 10. The arts-and-industry event is sited on the outskirts of Astana, surrounded by ongoing construction projects, reminding visitors that the city is still in active development. Designated the national capital in 1997, six years after Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union, Astana is the country’s second largest city; Almaty, the former capital, remains the preeminent metropolis and cultural heart. The first such global extravaganza to be held in a post-Soviet nation, Expo 2017 reportedly cost between $1.3 billion and $5 billion. That’s far less than Shanghai’s $50 billion Expo in 2010, but nevertheless enough to raise questions about the costs and benefits of hosting an event like this in a rich country with a poor populace.

 

Overall, Expo 2017 occupies 427 acres. The Chicago architectural firm of Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill created the master plan for its vast circular complex of exhibition spaces evoking a futuristic space colony. The site is dominated by a centrally located eight-story globe of dark reflective glass called the Nur Alem Pavilion, known colloquially as the Sphere. The structure houses the Kazakhstan National Pavilion and the Museum for Future Energy, which features a about a future Astana—including one that includes a flying car—on the highest tier, alongside an observation deck with a panoramic view of the city. The Sphere is ringed by the pavilions of approximately 150 participating countries.

 

Aigerim Asenova, who developed the concept for exhibition in the Kazakhstan National Pavilion, said she wanted to underscore the Expo’s theme of future energy and sustainability in her interactive multimedia installation on the first level of the Sphere. Part art and part information, the project offers an introduction to Kazakhstan through the five senses. In addition to animations and projections, it includes an intriguing fragrance developed by a French perfumer that conjures the smell of spring on the steppes. An installation of instruments plays melodies representing the various schools of traditional Kazakh music. A Hospitality Wall allows visitors to touch objects commonly found in a yurt, evoking the ideal of an inclusive and welcoming country in a time of increasing global xenophobia.

 

Three contemporary art exhibitions are also on view. One, in the Sphere, features some of the best-known Kazakh artists. Among them are, Syrlybek Bekbotaev, and Askhat Ahmediarov, who, using mixed media and installations, examine the transition of a traditional nomadic culture into a modern urban one. The multimedia, performative work by the Paris-based Ada Yu, on the other hand, visualizes emotional states by staging fantastic tableaux.

 

Two group shows of artists from outside Kazakhstan can be found at a pavilion called the Contemporary Arts Center. Talks, panels, conferences, and film screenings are also scheduled to take place there during the run of the Expo in partnership with Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. The advisor for the program is Olga Vesselova, deputy director of the Eurasian Cultural Alliance and co-director of Artbat, an annual contemporary art festival in Almaty. Artbat is funded privately, and it is more radical and improvisatory than Kazakhstan’s state-supported art organizations.

 

The exhibition presented by the Garage is a small, focused show of shots of Russian modernist buildings by architectural photographer Yuri Palmin. The other, “Artists & Robots,” was organized by France’s Galeries nationales du Grand Palais.  Palais. In keeping with the Expo’s theme of present and future technological innovations, it includes seventeen international artists who produce works using robotics and computational processes. London-based Patrick Tresset composed a still life with a skull and placed it in front of a machine that continuously draws copies of it. Quayola, an Italian artist who lives in London, uses a computerized arm wielding a power tool to carve giant blocks of white Stryrofoam into an ongoing series of sculptures modeled on Michelangelo’s Captives. In a darkened, mirrored room, Brazilian artist Raquel Kogan’s projection of glowing numbers streams over you as if you were being overwritten by digital code and reclaimed by the Matrix. Although a kind of computer-controlled bionic hand is the official contribution from Melbourne-based artist Stelarc, a more startling project was the ear implanted in his own arm. At the preview, he showed it to journalists and explained that he had grown it from an undifferentiated batch of cells. Some works are captivating. Others seem overly gimmicky. On the whole, the high-end science-fair appeal of “Artists & Robots” corresponded to the themes of Expo far better than the technological offerings in many of the national pavilions.

 

Four large-scale outdoor sculptures, each strategically located relative to the Sphere so as to be frequently encountered by Four large-scale outdoor sculptures, each strategically located relative to the Sphere so as to be frequently encountered by fairgoers, visualize forms in transition, in keeping with the theme of energy. Andrew Rogers, a Melbourne-based sculptor and land artist, produced the 34-foot-high, semi-abstract, semi-botanical bronze I Am—Energy. From some vantage points the interplay of light and shadow on the massive form’s surface creates an illusion of rippling movement. New York-based Marc Fornes has contributed one of his intricately curved and perforated constructions with surfaces that suggest woven metal. Using digital calculations for design and fabrication, Fornes deftly blends art, architecture, and design in his improbable forms, each one a balancing act of solid and void, organic and geometric. The two wire mesh works of Saken Narynov, a renowned veteran architect and artist in Kazakhstan, outline and shape space into forms that recall both a Mobius strip and the sinuous, unending curves of a traditional dragon motif. Resolutely modernist in many ways, Narynov is also a utopian futurist, with affinities for the visionary work of Paolo Soleri.

 

Kazakhstan, like many oil-rich countries, has been a generous supporter of traditional arts. As it aspires to a larger role on the world stage, it also seems to understand the value, both intangible and quite tangible, of a flourishing contemporary art scene. Although the country’s artists have appeared around the world with some frequency in the past decade or so, more would be welcome. Perhaps it’s time for an Almaty Biennial.

 

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/steppe-forward-art-and-tech-at-expo-2017-astana/

Sydney Morning Herald Weekend, 5-6 August 2017

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Works take a walk in the park

Artists from around Australia will feature in a free exhibition , Sculpture at Barangaroo, which opens at Barangaroo Reserve today.

 

Andrew Rogers’ bronze sculpture Folded 3 (pictured) is among the 14 works on display, with others including a large vinyl and aluminium kangaroo by Richard Tipping and Indigenous artwork by Adam King of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.

 

The inner city exhibition, held in partnership with Sculpture by the Sea, will finish on 20 August.  Though the park is open 24 hours a day, organisers have encouraged visitors to see the works between 8am and 6pm.

http://www.barangaroo.com/see-and-do/whats-on/sculpture-at-barangaroo/

 

Studio International 01 August 2017

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Andrew Rogers: I Am – Energy

Among Expo 2017’s vast complex of pavilions stands Andrew Rogers’
I AM–ENERGY. A sculptural feat of engineering, it spirals triumphantly upwards
to more than 10 metres, confronting visitors like a graceful ballerina en pointe.

by LILLY WEI

I AM–ENERGY is one of Australian artist Andrew Rogers’ most recent sculptures, commissioned for Expo 2017, the theme of which is Future Energy. Held in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital since 1997 – six years after it declared itself a (nominal) republic – this is the first such fair to take place in a post-Soviet country, boasting more than 150 participating nations. A permanent installation, it is also Rogers’ most monumental cast bronze work to date and one of the most daringly balanced, the bulk of its weight sent skyward. It offers the thrill of upending the expected distribution of mass, challenging gravity as well as treating the unyielding metal in ways that make it more visually agile, fluid, its state less certain, underscoring a narrative about transformations.

 

It is part of a recent series, We Are, several interpretations of which are at the Palazzo Mora (the scale there approximately human-sized) until 26 November, as a collateral event of the 2017 Venice Biennale. However, the image’s conceptual origins go back to the beginning of his career as an artist, with an abstract sculpture that he called the Rhythms of Life, a theme that has obsessed him ever since.
His Rhythms of Life construction derived from geoglyph motifs, the mysterious ancient signs and images made of enormous stones that appear cross-culturally, the enigmatic Nazca Lines in Peru being one of the most famous examples. Rogers transferred that title to the massive land art projects for which he is best known. All these structures are based on geoglyphs and of pharaonic scale. He began building them in 1999, siting them around the world, often in remote, inhospitable regions, from the Arava desert in Israel and the Gobi desert in China to Icelandic glaciers, the Himalayas in Nepal and the Atacama Desert in Chile. The most spectacular so far is Time and Space in Cappadocia, Turkey. It is essentially a public park of stone geoglyphs that occupies well over a square mile and is visible from space.
Stretching, spiralling triumphantly upwards to a height of 10.5 metres (34.5 feet), I AM–ENERGY is placed at a strategic intersection of Expo’s vast complex of pavilions; visitors will constantly pass by it as they cross and re-cross the grounds. The master plan for the fair is the brainchild of Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill and evokes the shining futuristic worlds of Star Wars. (Other crossings are marked by equally prominent sculptures created by American artist and designer Marc Fornes and Kazakh artist and architect Saken Narynov.) Looming behind is a dark reflective eight-storey glass globe, the Nur Alem, nicknamed The Sphere, the Expo’s hub, housing the Kazakhstan National Pavilion and Museum of Future Energy.

 

I AM–ENERGY weighs more than six tonnes, but this is belied by its grace – heavy metal made to feel light, poised daintily, astonishingly, on a slender stainless steel rod as if it were a lovely ballerina en pointe – a feat of expert engineering. Rogers also had to take into account the extreme weather conditions of Astana, to which his work will be subjected.

 

The sequence of contrasts in I AM–ENERGY is a strength. One is the shift between abstract form and a more representational image that suggests a great flowering bud or calyx. Another is the opposition of the material’s solidity with an illusionistic flutter that makes it seem almost like fabric, or the skin of a plant. The deceptive softness is enhanced by the play of light and shadow across the striated surface, as if the bronze were in rippled motion. Also compelling is the tension between exterior and interior, the seamless exterior dark, austere, precisely ribbed (the silicon bronze, or “modern” bronze permits the welding of the joins so they are invisible). When you walk around it, the form unfurls to reveal its smoothly voluptuous interior, its heart of gold, perhaps reminding us of the richness of Kazakhstan’s petroleum and mineral resources and the promise of its future. But more than that, Rogers is a modernist who is also a spiritualist and preservationist. He thinks of the scientific facts of the phenomenal world and its social implications but he also thinks of archteypes and metaphors, all of which refer to energy, to the life force and its constant renewal.
• Andrew Rogers’ We Are is at the Palazzo Mora as a collateral exhibition to
the Venice Biennale 2017 until 26 November 2017.

http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/andrew-rogers-i-am-energy-expo-2017-astana-kazakhstan

Architectural Digest Land Artist Andrew Rogers…

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Land Artist Andrew Rogers’s Monumental Works Defy Belief

The creative mastermind travels around the world building sculptures that measure over 600 feet across.

TEXT BY JANELLE ZARA   Posted July 13, 2017

At 34 feet tall and weighing in at seven tons, Unfurling Energy, the twisting bronze-and-steel sculpture artist Andrew Rogers unveiled at the energy-themed Expo 2017 that recently opened in Astana, Kazakhstan, is no small feat. Compared to many of his other works, however, it’s absolutely minuscule. For the past 16 years, the Melbourne-based sculptor has traveled to the extremes of all seven continents for his “Rhythms of Life” series: geoglyphs, or monumental works of stone, measuring upward of 650 feet across. Rogers plants his sculptures directly into “topographically interesting places,” he says, which have included the lowest point on Earth and the Great Wall of China’s western terminus in the Gobi Desert. Despite their monumental size, however, his works leave a very small footprint.

“Do you know the phrase ‘Many hands make light work’?” asks Rogers, who takes the adage quite literally. To minimize his impact on the environment, he employs members of local communities (so far 7,500 total) to manually pass each stone from point A to point B. Each of his projects takes the proverbial village—he consults with both local environmental and political authorities and community elders. He targets otherwise unusable land, and ensures that the men and women he employs are paid equally.

“The work only exists for a moment in time, but you have to be responsible,” Rogers says. “It would be arrogant of me to go in and impose my own values.” His Land Art, as well as the sculptures of studio practice, are an homage to the preservation of history, heritage, and most importantly, to the earth.

Rhythms of Life, Antarctica, 2010
Rogers’s work takes him to the far reaches of the globe, including the South Pole.

Sacred, 2008
“I look for sites of history and heritage,” says Rogers. This figure of a horse, installed on the hillside below the 900-year-old Spissky Castle in Slovakia, was made from scraps of travertine marble.

Circles, 2005
On the Altiplano of Bolivia, at an altitude of 14,300 feet, Rogers borrowed the spiritual symbols of the Pachamama people and designed a series of concentric circles spanning 328 feet.
Circles, 2005

The project employed more than 800 locals, and was blessed bu a Pachamama shaman before it began.

Sacred Fire, 2012
In the inhospitable climate of the Namib Desert, Rogers worked with the people of the Himba tribe.

Listen, 2012
“I like the work to create a vista,” says Rogers. In Cappadocia, Turkey, a carved stone
amphitheater serves as the viewing platform for the accompanying 52-foot-tall arch that
frames the landscape.

The Messenger, 2006
In the Gobi Desert, 1,000 soldiers form the Chinese Army assembled this geoglyph depicting a messenger on horseback that measures almost 500,000 square feet.

Andrew Rogers
Despite the sheer size of his land art, the majority of Rogers’s work takes place in the
foundry with a team of metalworkers, one of whom previously worked with the sculptor
Henry Moore. Rogers describes his sculptures as “figurative forms of the same philosophy
as the Land Art: It’s the individuals of society that make our world a place of justice
and compassion.”

http://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/land-artist-andrew-rogers

Yale Books Unbound – Viva Art and Artists!

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Viva Art and Artists! The 2017 Venice Biennale Calls for Celebration, but is this a Time to Party?

July 20, 2017 |  in Art & Architecture, Current Affairs, David Ebony and ARTbooks

David Ebony — (Abridged)

The biannual pilgrimage to Venice for the venerable, and ever more enormous international art show known as La Biennale di Venezia, is a worthwhile endeavor for anyone interested in the evolution of contemporary art. Unfailingly, the show offers a rewarding experience whether the core exhibition is a success, a failure, or something in between, as is the case with this year’s installment, the 57th.

This year, the European Cultural Centre hosts “Personal Structures: Open Borders,” a large-scale international group exhibition held in three venues: the Palazzo Moro, Palazzo Bembo, and in one outdoor area of the Giardini. Under the auspices of the Dutch non-profit Global Art Affairs Foundation, and organized by a team of young Italian curators, the show features works by artists from 50 countries. High-profile veterans, such as Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner are represented, but the project also showcases the work of younger artists, such as Taiwan’s Li-Jen Shih, whose giant, stainless steel King Kong Rhino drew a great deal of attention near the Giardini entrance; and New York’s Richard Humann, whose high-tech contribution to the exhibition, Ascension, includes an “augmented reality app” that allows one to view imaginary constellations visible above Venice each night of the Biennale.

The courtyard entrance to the Palazzo Moro is lined with a series of eight elegant, quasi-abstract bronzes by Andrew Rogers. The Australian artist is best-known for his vast land-art projects, Rhythms of Life, which he has created in many, mostly remote places around the globe. For the past three decades or more, Rogers has also produced free-standing sculptures. Here, in the urban—and urbane—environment of Venice, he presents intimate, human-scale pieces in bronze, collectively titled We Are. The totemic forms appear as abstracted figures, like sentinels guarding the palazzo treasures, perhaps. The works resemble unfurling flags, or billowing sails, which, metaphorically at least, refer to the human figure. As in the comportment of an individual, each piece bears the physicality of a rough exterior contrasted with highly polished interior surfaces. These attributes allude to the outward, self-protective stance one must possess in order to survive, and the literally reflective interior world of thoughts and emotions.

On a formal level, We Are corresponds to the billowing fabric and dramatic theatricality of Baroque art and architecture that is visible everywhere in Venice. Rogers speaks for many artists participating in the Biennale and collateral shows as he comments in a press statement, “To be surrounded in Venice by Tintorettos, Titians, and Bellinis, some of the greatest art in the world, and by a cultural history that reaches back more than a thousand years, is a truly transformative experience. To have a major exhibition of sculpture in Venice at the time of the Biennale is a great honor and privilege.”

Corresponding to Rogers’s work in the way it echoes the fluid lines in Venetian Baroque paintings, a resplendent, textile-like wall relief made of bits of found metal, The Beginning and the End (2015) by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, graces one long wall in Intuition. This collateral show, the last in a series of special exhibitions hosted by Belgian dealer Axel Vervoordt at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, and co-curated by Daniela Ferretti, features historical works ranging from Neolithic stone menhirs, circa 3000 B.C., to large, recent photos of fish eyes by Italian artist Bruna Esposito. Throughout the moodily lit rooms of the palazzo are top-notch works by artists like Lucio Fontana, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anish Kapoor, and Marina Abramovic. An interactive, meditative work on the palazzo’s top floor, created especially for this exhibition by Kimsooja, Archive of Mind, invites visitors to sit at a table and mould spheres from lumps of clay. There could not possibly be a better way of spending a quiet hour or two of a summer afternoon in Venice—rolling balls of clay while looking out the windows over the rooftops of ancient buildings along the Grand Canal.

Link to the full article: http://blog.yalebooks.com/2017/07/20/viva-art-and-artists-the-2017-venice-biennale-calls-for-celebration-but-is-this-a-time-to-party/