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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’s “Tilted Arc” and Olafur Eliasson’s “The 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.

Andy Goldsworthy – Touching North, 1989, North Pole feat

Andy Goldsworthy’s four massive ice sculptures at the North Pole

Environmental art, Sculptures   3 min read
In 1989, Andy Goldsworthy created four massive snow rings at one the most remote place on Planet Earth, the North Pole. These ephemeral sculptures marked the position of the North Pole and were built around it. Through any of the four sculptures, the direction will always be south. An Inuit teaching snow-cutting & packing techniques [...]

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Jonas-Wood-–-Still-Life-with-Two-Owls-2016-The-Museum-of-Contemporary-Art-Los-Angeles-feat

Jonas Wood’s still life mural covers the entire Los Angeles MoCA

Graffiti, Paintings   2 min read
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles may feel hidden because of its downtown location. For a long time since it was designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, it has been associated with its less conspicuous qualities. Since L.A. painter Jonas Wood covered the museum building facade with a reproduction of his Still Life [...]

Jonas Wood’s still life mural covers the entire Los Angeles MoCA Read

Olafur Eliasson’s freestanding waterfall in Versailles

Installations, Sculptures   2 min read
In his 2016 work on the Versailles waterfall, Olafur Eliasson made displacements and destabilization which have changed the perceptions people had about the famous landmark. Before he began his work, he approached the Chateau and gardens of Versailles to experiment whether the project was implementable. His work didn’t involve installing objects but rather coming up [...]

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Mark Bradford’s giant sculpture Mithra resembles Noah’s ark

Sculptures   2 min read
Asked to describe himself, Mark Bradford uses the words demolisher and builder in the same breadth and it is easy to see why. Using posters created for promoting merchant goods and services, flyers and general advertising materials, he takes pride in transforming anything he can lay his hands on into large-scale art pieces. His specialty [...]

Mark Bradford’s giant sculpture Mithra resembles Noah’s ark Read

Braco Dimitrijević’s casual passersby – These people are not famous

Installations, Photography   7 min read
Braco Dimitrijević’s Casual Passer-By series are a series of canvas-based photographs created as from 1971. The works feature large-scale images of people that the artist met in the streets. Each piece comes with the exact time and place where the artist met with the person. However, he did not always put the exact date. These [...]

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Ian Strange burns down suburban houses in the name of art

Paintings, Performances   3 min read
Suburban is a complex film and photography installation by New York-based Australian artist Ian Strange. Suburban was created by Strange as a result of a collaboration with a film crew and volunteers from different parts of America, including Alabama, Detroit, New Hampshire, Ohio and New York. Over the course of three months, Strange and the [...]

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The scale of Anish Kapoor’s sculpture is frighteningly extraordinary

Sculptures   3 min read
North of Auckland, in a stretch of land called Gibbs Farms, sits Anish Kapoor’s Dismemberment, Site 1 (2009). The scale of this sculpture is frighteningly extraordinary and is the largest one that Kapoor has ever created; it is the height of an eight story building. How the work makes you feel Unsurprisingly, the sculpture makes [...]

The scale of Anish Kapoor’s sculpture is frighteningly extraordinary Read

Barry McGee’s tag murals – Walls covered with hundreds of red tags

Graffiti, Paintings   5 min read
When the iconic gallerist Jeffrey Deitch swapped the East Coast for West Coast, many wondered about the state of street art in New York City. Granted, the newer generation of gallerists such as Joshua Liner and Jonathan Levine had become preeminent curators with their fresh take on street art. However, with his unlimited resources, Deitch [...]

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Tavares-Strachan-You-Belong-Here-2014-blocked-out-neon-9.1x24.4m feat

Tavares Strachan’s colossal bright neon pink sculpture: Impossible to ignore

Installations   3 min read
Tavares Strachan showed his large-scale flowing sculpture in 2014. The sculpture was part of the Prospect.3: Notes for the Now biennial show between October 2014 and January 2015 in New Orleans. Neon piece visible throughout New Orleans Strachan’s project was a declarative statement and performance entitled You Belong Here. The installation featured a 100-foot neon [...]

Tavares Strachan’s colossal bright neon pink sculpture: Impossible to ignore Read