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.
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