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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.

Artist David Brooks & These massive rooftops on Manhattan’s last undeveloped lot

Architecture, Sculptures   4 min read
Imagine viewing rooftops at eye level with pedestrians in Manhattan, New York? That seems nearly impossible when you consider New York has more than 300 high-rise buildings taller than 150 meters. This means that to really appreciate the city’s landscape of rooftops, one has to climb to the rooftop of another landmark building or take [...]

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Yayoi Kusama’s Yellow Trees covers entire buildings in New York

Installations   1 min read
In celebration of Yayoi Kusama’s past retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art earlier in 2012, two off-site projects took place. In one of them, Kusama’s rhythmic dotted “Yellow Tree motif transformed a construction site in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan into a giant canvas. A detail of the original painting Yellow Trees (1994) [...]

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Wilfredo-Prieto-–-Apolitico-2001-installation-view-Hardturm-Stadium-Zurich-Switzerland-2012-feat

Wilfredo Prieto’s Apolítico – Stripping iconic flags of their familiar color

Installations   3 min read
Apolítico, created in 2001 by Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (1978), was a collection of 45 flags from different countries around the world. Prieto chose the countries based on the fact they were all recognized by the United Nations. In an interesting twist, the artist stripped the color from the flags and kept the abstract and [...]

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Tom Fruin’s Watertower – Made of 1000 scrap plexiglass pieces

Architecture, Sculptures, Stained glass windows   5 min read
Not many artists enjoy the privilege of having their pieces displayed in New York City’s prime locations, but artist Tom Fruin does enjoy this. His creation of the Water Tower is a sight to behold and can be easily viewed from FDR Drive, parks and streets of Dumbo, Manhattan Bridge, Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge Park [...]

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Tokyo-Hotaru-100000-solar-powered-LED-light-balls-Tokyo-Hotaru-Firefly-Festival-Sumida-river-2012 feat

Impressive photos of Tokyo’s Hotaru Firefly festival on Sumida river

Installations, Light installations   4 min read
Fireflies have become a rare sight in Japan. Once they used to glow their low light all over the country in the summer time but now they have become an uncommon sight even in rural areas. Last month 100,000 LED lights floated down through Tokyo’s city centre on the Sumida river mimicking a stream of [...]

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What was Antony Gormley’s gigantic Horizon Field Hamburg all about?

Sculptures   3 min read
Over the past one and a half years, British artist Antony Gormley has prepared an exhibition at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Europe’s biggest space for contemporary art. Rather than following through with the proposed retrospective, Gormley decided to create a massive interactive sculpture that only comes alive by the participation of the visitors. Visitors entered the [...]

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ANGEL-PIECE-HAMISH-GARDEN-FOR-NEW-YORK-feat

What do you think about Robert Montgomery’s poem billboards?

Installations, Light installations   5 min read
Robert Montgomery is a Scottish/British artist, poet, and sculptor famous for his site-specific billboards that are created from light and text, and also fire poems. Montgomery is also the associate publisher of Dazed & Confused. His works border melancholic post-situationist tradition. The artist believes that art should be taken out of galleries and be placed [...]

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