Agnes Denes
Half-bird Space Station
Artist
Agnes Denes
(1931, Budapest), Hungarian
Original Title
Half-bird Space Station
Date1994
Mediumlithography and metallic dust on BFK paper
Dimensions 63 × 90 cm
Classificationsprints
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionAgnes Denes is considered one of the first artists engaging with environmental art. Her interest in the natural sciences and her love for the planet gave rise to a distinctive artistic expression, which, along with aesthetic considerations, explores questions of sociology, politics, and the protection of nature. Her visionary artistic practice incorporates knowledge of science, philosophy, and history, examining the human impact on nature and society’s relationship to it. Apart from extensive environmental art projects, Denes is also known for her paintings and prints which offered a space for innovative experimentation with ink and metal dust.
The motif of a pyramid, which Denes has incorporated into her works since the 1970s, relates her work to themes human existence and civilization. She combines it with various concepts through which she reflects the flexibility of nature and reveals hidden analogies between different natural sciences. In doing so, she alters the form and appearance of the pyramids, often significantly transforming them. Half-Bird Space Station (1994) appears in a state of weightlessness, resembling a floating space station from a future world. It represents flexible, self-regenerative, easily renewable units or modules reminiscent of natural systems.
Internationally acclaimed artist Agnes Denes (*1931, Budapest) and her family fled her home country for Sweden after the outbreak of World War II. Denes then moved to New York in 1954, where she began studying painting at Columbia University. However, she soon came to find painting too restrictive and decided to develop her ideas through different media and to integrate her art with the natural environment. In 1968, she presented her project Rice/Tree/Burial in which she grew rice as a symbol of human life, planted strips of trees as an expression of human intervention, and buried her poetry to mark her new engagement with environmental issues. In 1970, Denes wrote her first manifesto. Two years later, together with two fellow artists, she opened the A.I.R. Gallery, dedicated exclusively to art created by women. In 1976, she was awarded the International Women’s Year Award. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she created her well-known philosophical drawings and began her series of pyramids and map projections. From 1974 to 1979, she taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1982, she realized large-scale project Wheatfields – A Confrontation in downtown Manhattan, which reacted to the impacts of globalization and the global food shortage. Denes has received numerous research scholarships and attended conferences about the global issue of climate change. In 2017, she presented her project Living Pyramid at Documenta 14 in Kassel.
The motif of a pyramid, which Denes has incorporated into her works since the 1970s, relates her work to themes human existence and civilization. She combines it with various concepts through which she reflects the flexibility of nature and reveals hidden analogies between different natural sciences. In doing so, she alters the form and appearance of the pyramids, often significantly transforming them. Half-Bird Space Station (1994) appears in a state of weightlessness, resembling a floating space station from a future world. It represents flexible, self-regenerative, easily renewable units or modules reminiscent of natural systems.
Internationally acclaimed artist Agnes Denes (*1931, Budapest) and her family fled her home country for Sweden after the outbreak of World War II. Denes then moved to New York in 1954, where she began studying painting at Columbia University. However, she soon came to find painting too restrictive and decided to develop her ideas through different media and to integrate her art with the natural environment. In 1968, she presented her project Rice/Tree/Burial in which she grew rice as a symbol of human life, planted strips of trees as an expression of human intervention, and buried her poetry to mark her new engagement with environmental issues. In 1970, Denes wrote her first manifesto. Two years later, together with two fellow artists, she opened the A.I.R. Gallery, dedicated exclusively to art created by women. In 1976, she was awarded the International Women’s Year Award. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she created her well-known philosophical drawings and began her series of pyramids and map projections. From 1974 to 1979, she taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1982, she realized large-scale project Wheatfields – A Confrontation in downtown Manhattan, which reacted to the impacts of globalization and the global food shortage. Denes has received numerous research scholarships and attended conferences about the global issue of climate change. In 2017, she presented her project Living Pyramid at Documenta 14 in Kassel.
