Nature and Art: Goldsworthy and Tyler
John Eischeid
If the earth were made of foam and resin, and if we saw only through the eyes
of a camera, then the world would look much like Mike Tyler’s apparently
unnamed exhibition currently at Location One. If the world had none of these
things, and we were living with nearly no technology at all, then most sculpture
would look like that of Andy Goldsworthy. We are blessed to have both. We are,
however, cursed to unravel the ways in which their works seem to be both at odds
and in agreement at the same time.
Tyler creates natural
environments out of synthetic materials. To wit: stalactites made out of foam
and installed in panels hanging overhead; stalagmites reaching up from the floor;
a figurine of person kneeling in cave structures, made entirely from “CNC
milled extruded foam from 3D body scans”; and a life-size animated sequence
of a human figure, based on 3D body scans. The gallery is located in Soho, the
unofficial cosmetics capital of the world, so the plasticine renditions of people
and nature do not seem entirely out of place. What does seem out of place are
the forms themselves. The natural curvatures of the sculptures and the jagged
rock faces in accompanying photo-boxes stand in contrast to the city around them;
organic rock-forms against rectangles built of brick, mortar and glass. The commentary,
intended or not, is that we are often so removed from nature that an artist can
treat as his subject forms and structures that would be taken for granted in
a pastoral setting. His synthetic recreations bring natural forms into a city
in which they simply are not, but preserve the darkness, allure and sublime power
of the original. The work itself is enthralling and, in the least, interesting,
as it hints at the sublime and mysterious nature of nature. Even more interesting
is that we find it interesting.
So let’s remove
Mr. Tyler from his comfortably uncomfortable urban setting. Let’s deprive
him of his materials and make him work not with nature as a subject, but nature
as both a subject and a material. The result would be something like the work
of Andy Goldsworthy whose ephemeral pieces are usually both made in nature and
made of it. He was the subject of a recent documentary, “Rivers and Tides,”
which records his installations, which are usually destroyed by their own inspiration
and are often made with that in mind. One work was simply using naturally occurring
pigments to make a waterfall flow in red, a forced bleeding of the riverbed.
One temporary structure was a large, somewhat stable disk, made of driftwood
and meant to be picked up by the circular eddy from a rising tide and torn apart
as it floated downstream. He has also created works with a greater degree of
permanence, including one recent installation at Galerie Lelong in Chelsea.
“Passage”
was a show including three cairns, which are simply round structures made of
stones. The large cones were higher than anyone is tall and equally as round.
They were simply too big to fit into the space without running into the building,
so the cairns were simply installed around the pillars and walls and their circular
forms were fashioned around the perpendicular angles. The compromise suggested
that the cairns had been there long before the walls and would be there long
after, but they also seemed to compliment and lend a natural order to an otherwise
vacant floor space. The installation both denied and accepted its urban environment,
simultaneously defaming and complimenting. The tension in this work is clear,
but it also shows Goldsworthy’s acceptance of the natural environment, as
opposed to Tyler’s attempts to recreate it.
So where will the
theme of nature go from here? Both artists agree that the natural world undeniably
has a place in art, but one artist keeps his work one level removed, while the
other immerses himself in nature entirely, even spiting to some degree the city
and the venue surrounding the work. Nature has always been in art, it obviously
is now, and presumably it will always be. When painting was the main form of
art, nature was often its subject. When installations became popular forms of
expression, Tyler and Goldsworthy made labors to bring nature into the act. What’s
next, in a step beyond installations, and how will nature be used and depicted
then? I don’t know. I imagine some child sleeping in the countryside and
dreaming of the city’s canyons and some child sleeping in the city and dreaming
of forests and caves. Perhaps they have the answer, or at least know how to find
it.
