This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Architectural Record logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Architectural Record logo
  • NEWS
    • Latest News
    • Interviews
    • Reviews
    • Commentary
    • Editorials
  • PROJECTS
    • Building Types
    • Interior Design
    • Museums & Arts Centers
    • Adaptive Reuse
    • Colleges & Universities
    • Lighting
    • Snapshot
  • HOUSES
    • Record Houses
    • House of the Month
    • Featured Houses
    • Kitchen and Bath
  • PRODUCTS
    • Material World
    • Categories
    • Award Winners
    • Case Studies
    • Partners in Design
    • Trends & Insights
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Best Architecture Schools
    • Top 300 Firms
    • Theme Issues
    • Record Houses
    • Record Products
    • Good Design Is Good Business
    • Design Vanguard
    • Historical Archive
    • Cocktail Napkin Sketch
    • Videos
  • CALL FOR ENTRIES
    • Record Houses
    • Guess the Architect Contest
    • Submit Your Work
  • CONTINUING ED
    • Architectural Technology
    • Architect Continuing Education
    • Continuing Education Center
    • Digital Academies
  • EVENTS
    • Record on the Road
    • Innovation Conference
    • Women In Architecture
    • Webinars
    • Advertising Excellence Awards
  • MORE
    • Subscribe
    • Customer Service
    • Digital Edition
    • eNewsletter
    • Interactive Spotlight
    • Store
    • Custom Content Marketing
    • Research
    • Sponsor Insights
    • eBooks
  • CONTACT
    • Advertise
Home » Expansive Agnes Denes Retrospective Opens at The Shed in New York
Architecture NewsCommentary & Criticism

Expansive Agnes Denes Retrospective Opens at The Shed in New York

Agnes Denes

Model for Probability Pyramid-Study for Crystal Pyramid, one of three new Shed commissions of previously unrealized work based on a 1976 drawing by Agnes Denes.

Photo © Dan Bradica. Courtesy The Shed

Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes, Wheatfield—A Confrontation. Two acres of wheat planted and harvested by the artist on the Battery Park landfill, Manhattan, Summer 1982. Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.

Photo © John McGrall

Agnes Denes

Installation view of upper-level gallery.

Photo © Dan Bradica. Courtesy The Shed

Agnes Denes

Tree Mountain–A Living Time Capsule—11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years (Triptych), 1992—96.

Courtesy the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.

Agnes Denes

Portrait of Agnes Denes, 2018.

Photo © Jeremy Liebman. Courtesy The Shed

Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes
Agnes Denes
October 9, 2019
Josephine Minutillo
KEYWORDS Exhibitions / New York City / The Shed
Reprints
No Comments

Agnes Denes has been a part of some 600 solo and group shows internationally over her 50-year career, but the retrospective Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates, opening today at The Shed in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, is the first comprehensive exhibition of the Hungarian-born artist’s work in New York, the place she’s called home for much of that time. “I am a visual artist, a philosopher, a draftsman, an environmentalist, and a woman,” Denes told The Shed artistic director Alex Poots when asked why there had been no such show before. “I’m hard to fit in one box.”

The Shed, as it turns out, is the perfect box to present her varied body of work, which “spans many mediums, interdisciplinary modes of thinking, experimentation, and pushing boundaries,” according to Poots. Spread out over two floors of expansive galleries within the famously movable structure, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Rockwell Group and opened earlier this year, the impressive exhibition includes sketches, beautifully precise drawings influenced by math and science, sculptures, and photographs and archival video footage, particularly of Wheatfield-A Confrontation (1982), the monumental public artwork for which she is perhaps best known, where two acres in what became Manhattan’s Battery Park City were planted as a comment on mismanagement of food, waste, energy, commerce, trade, land use, and economics.

While Denes was a climate change activist before the term existed, her prescient works also anticipated other topics facing society today. In her “people works,” she meticulously drew individuals to form structures. As Denes wrote, the works depict “a society composed of individuals who stand in protected isolation, alone but without privacy. They cannot escape the structure yet seem to be fooled by illusions of freedom.” In 1970, she was one of only three women to participate in Software, a very early exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York about computer technology and information processing.

Though the ailing 88-year-old Denes was unable to make it to the press preview, the exhibition debuts three new Shed commissions of formally unrealized work that she had yet to see, including Model for Probability Pyramid-Study for Crystal Pyramid, a variation of a 1976 drawing by Denes for a theoretical superstructure that would measure 50 meters squared (164 feet) and contain 160,000 glass blocks. The constructed version, on the Shed’s second level, is a striking 30-foot-wide, 17-foot-high pyramid composed of 6,000 3D-printed bricks made of compostable corn-based plastic that is illuminated from within. According to Emma Enderby, senior curator at The Shed and organizer of the retrospective, “Agnes has waited a long time, not just for this exhibition, but for us to catch up with her thinking.”

Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates is on view until March 22, 2020.

AR Subscribe

Recent Articles by Josephine Minutillo

Solar Carve by Studio Gang

The Rubell Museum by Selldorf Architects

2019 Monterey Design Conference Draws Record Crowd

Josephine-cropped1

Josephine Minutillo has been a contributor to Architectural Record since 2001. After practicing architecture for several years in New York City, she turned her attention full time to writing, joining the staff of RECORD as Senior Editor in 2008. In her current role as Features Editor, she reports on major building projects, exhibitions, and design innovation. Her articles have also appeared in Interior Design, Mark, Frame, Surface, Azure, Whitewall, Interni, Monument and Encyclopedia Britannica, and she was previously a Contributing Editor to Architectural Digest. She has been an invited critic at Washington University in St. Louis, The Cooper Union, Columbia GSAPP, Pratt Institute, The City College of New York, and Yale University.

Instagram: @josephineminutillo_

Related Articles

OMA to Design New Museum Expansion in New York City

David Adjaye-designed SPYSCAPE Opens in New York

OMA-Designed Renovation of Sotheby’s New York to Open in May

You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

More Videos

AR Tremco Webinar


 


 

Events

December 17, 2019

Minimizing Risk in Blindside Waterproofing Applications

Credits: 1 AIA LU/Elective; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU

May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

This course will identify blindside waterproofing product technologies, their differences, the criteria for product performance, and how to design a waterproofing system accordingly. Best practices for mitigating application risks and managing critical areas prone to moisture infiltration will be reviewed, including the sequence of installation and for detailing failure points.

January 15, 2020

Contemporary and Comfortable Designs Using Natural Stone

Credits: 1 AIA LU/Elective; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU

May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

Natural stone is durable, sustainable, and as a currently sought-after design aesthetic, can increase a home’s value. Stone is a material that also never goes out of style! The projects presented in this webinar demonstrate the uses of several types of natural stone, emphasizing the many ways it can be used to create a contemporary and comfortable living or working space.
 

View All Submit An Event

Products

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

See More Products

Tweets by @ArchRecord

Architectural Record

AR December 2019 Cover

2019 December

In the December 2019 issue, Architectural Record reveals the winners of the annual Record Products contest.

View More Subscribe
  • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Survey And Sample
    • Editorial Calendar
  • Call for Entries
  • Subscribe
    • Subscribe
    • Renew
    • Create Account
    • Change Address
    • Pay My Bill
    • Free eNewsletters
    • Customer Care
  • Advertise
    • Architectural Record
    • Advertising Awards
  • Industry Jobs

Copyright ©2019. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing