Site-specific art

274 articles

Site-specific art is a form of artistic creation designed for a particular location, taking into account the space’s unique characteristics. This genre emerged in the 1960s with the rise of installation art and land art. Artists like Robert Smithson, with his “Spiral Jetty,” and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, known for wrapping buildings and landscapes, pioneered this approach. Site-specific works often integrate with their environment, whether natural or urban, and can encompass various mediums including sculpture, performance, and multimedia installations.

Notable examples include Richard Serra’sTilted Arc” and Olafur Eliasson’sThe Weather Project” at Tate Modern. Site-specific art challenges traditional notions of portable, commodifiable artworks, often emphasizing experience over object. It can be permanent, like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or temporary, such as Ai Weiwei’s installations.

Jaehyo Lee – 0121-1110=114047, 2014, 700 x 700 x 700 cm, wood feat

Jaehyo Lee (이재효) & his massive organic sculptures – Our top 10

Jaehyo Lee (b. 1965, Hapchen, South Korea) graduated in 1992 with a BFA from the Hong-Ik University in Seoul. Combining distinct traces of Land Art, Arte Povera and Minimalism Lee´s works cast a questioning eye over the roots of form, its function and its role within the natural world. Work between modern art and design [...]

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See how Peter Kogler’s hypnotic installations transform rooms

Peter Kogler is a renowned artist from Austria that currently works and lives in Vienna. Kogler is best known for his different psychedelic room installations. Through his paintwork and his intricate projections, he transforms ordinary looking rooms and spaces such as lobbies, galleries, and transit centers by making them look twisted, warped or distorted, which [...]

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What makes Vienna’s State Opera Safety Curtain unique?

Safety Curtain is an ongoing exhibition series taking place in the Vienna State Opera, Austria. Conceived and initiated by museum in progress in 1998, Safety Curtain has converted the firewall between the stage and the auditorium into a temporary exhibition space for contemporary artists every year. The Vienna Opera has been hosting art shows since [...]

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Tomás Saraceno’s In Orbit – A seemingly impossible installation

A massive installation by Tomás Saraceno titled In Orbit has to be one of the artist’s most notable and successful installations. At a height of more than 20 meters, Saraceno suspended a mesh construction within which audiences could move weightlessly on the net. The net construction, accessible on three levels, was designed to resemble a [...]

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Why does Lara Almarcegui create massive piles of rubble?

Spanish born Lara Almarcegui who currently lives in Rotterdam has always had a deep curiosity for examining processes of contemporary transformation that are brought about by the social, political and economic transformations in society. Since the early 1990s, Lara has examined urban areas that most artists choose not to focus on, such as rubble from [...]

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People Architecture Office & their giant Chinese character installation

In 2015, a Chinese studio known as People’s Architecture Office made waves on art and architecture media when they used metal air conditioning pipes to create large-scale Chinese characters on the front exterior of the Tabular Baitasi Visitor center during the Beijing Design Week. The Tabular Baitasi Visitor Center has long been used to host [...]

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Mansudae Art Studio: North Korea’s artistic influence in Africa

Artwork from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has always been a trademark for modern socialist realism. Although North Korea is well known for being the most secretive nation in the world, the largely unknown nation is certainly not shy when it comes to publicizing their statues, monuments, grand festivals, and celebrations. In particular, a [...]

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Joe Namy’s colorful & oversized curtain partially covers museum

For his Sharjah Biennial 13 project, artist and composer Joe Namy’s has researched the influence of opera on music in the Arab world. Starting in Egypt with the founding of the Khedivial Opera House in 1869, he has found traces of the art form in Lebanon, Palestine, Kuwait, and more recently, the United Arab Emirates. [...]

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Jaume Plensa’s giant Crown Fountain sculpture in Chicago spits out water

Within Chicago’s Millennium Park stands an interactive piece of art that the public never seems to have enough of. Designed by Jaume Plensa, a Catalan artist, the fountain is an illustration of how creativity and technology can mingle to form an enchanting piece of work. Crown Fountain The work, which was unveiled in July 2004 [...]

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Carsten Höller’s slides: A fun way to experience museums

Carsten Höller is well known for playfully including his slide installations in major museums across the world. Höller, formerly a scientist with a degree in agronomy, is famous for repurposing real-world components, such as slides, for art spaces. The majority of his works feature aesthetics that are relational, meaning that the projects created are inspired [...]

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What are Kimsooja’s rainbow rooms all about?

Kimsooja is a Korean-born artist that has won recognition around the world. Despite living in New York, her work is exhibited across Europe, Asia and America. Her work includes performances, photographs, installations and videos. Kimsooja’s work involves several subjects like relationships with others, nomadism and the role of women in dealing with challenges that we [...]

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