Sculpture Studio Spring 2012

Project 3: Site, Place, and Installation
ANALYSIS

Site-specific art has a single similarity with interactive art, specifically interaction. However, while interactive sculptures are focused on the communication of viewer and artwork and/or artist, site specific works are involved in the relationship between the artwork and their location. These works are not constricted to the environment of a gallery, as some site-specific artists choose to work outside amongst the natural world.

Site-specific works are divided into two rough categories, ranging from site works created to display imagined places to works that are constructed within a real place itself. Works of imagined places include artworks created solely for looking, installations based on memory or experiences, or relocated sites and mobile places. An example is Marcel Dunchamp’s Étant donnés, a sculptural work that is only visible when a viewer peers through two holes to gaze at the arrangement hidden within. Or Andrea Zittel’s A-Z Prototype for Pocket Property, encompassing a floating home sculpture that resembles an island. These works move the viewer to gaze into the mind of the artist, to witness their memories or experiences, or to invite the viewer into an abstract world, while using the space around them as a definition of the work itself.

Real places, on the other hand, engage with the physical conditions of the site, interact with it, are responsive with it, or are created for and within it. These works are directly related to their environment through both location and the materials chosen by the artist. In these types of works, the artist must visit the site, research it, explore it, even before they are able to develop a basic idea.
Within this group are Earthworks, in which the art and landscape are intensely linked. An example of an artist who is exemplary in earthworks is Andy Goldworthy. Using only the natural materials he finds in his surroundings, such as rocks, leaves, and sticks, he creates impermanent works that engage or interact with the chosen location. The artist Maya Lin also creates works that interact with the site. Her work The Wave Field, is an alteration of the earth, creating numerous rolling hills in rows across a field. But unlike Goldsworthy’s works, which are directly related to the earth, Lin’s work is directly related to the concepts pursued in an engineering building nearby.

Removed from the environment of a studio or gallery, what defines the artwork is challenged by the site. Are site-specific works ‘extensions’ of the area itself? Or do they create an additional context within?