Eco-phenomenology and the Maintenance of Eco Art: Agnes Denes’s A Forest for Australia

Abstract

Agnes Denes (b. 1931) is a Hungarian-born, New York–based multidisciplinary artist who has created an extensive body of art and writing since the 1960s. Denes’s practice transcends mediums and disciplines, informed by decades spent researching mathematics, physics, linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology, among numerous other subjects. Over the course of her career, Denes has engaged a range of mediums, including sculpture, drawing, architectural plans, holograms, fields, and forests. In her work, the artist sketches future worlds reimagined by new laws of physics, surveys timelines of evolutionary biology, and visually interprets the space-time continuum. Her artistic practice manifests in forms that include, but are certainly not limited to, metallic-ink graphs, largescale drawings, colossal pyramidal sculptures, and magnetic levitating masses. These explorations are often underpinned by astute environmental awareness. This can be traced back to the late 1960s, when Denes pioneered an early form of environmentalism called ‘eco-logic’, which she defines as an approach to artmaking that combines philosophical concepts and ecological concerns. Denes first engaged eco-logic in Rice/Tree/Burial (1968–79), a temporary work that included planting a field of rice, chaining trees, and burying a time capsule. She went on to create three more significant public ecological works: Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982), a shimmering field of wheat temporarily planted in downtown Manhattan; Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule (1992–96), a permanent, spiralling forest of 11,000 trees planted in Yl€ oj€arvi, Finland; and A Forest for Australia (1998), a circular series of 6000 trees planted outside Melbourne, Australia. When surveying the artist’s body of work through a twenty-first-century lens of eco art informed by climate crisis, no other series seems more urgent, prophetic, and underexamined than these four realised public works. Through their creation, Denes developed a unique form of eco art that combines myriad disciplines with the goal of forging an improved and sustainable relationship