EARTH - A Collective Landscape

Rebecca Solnit

In EARTH – A collective landscape the AkzoNobel Art Foundation brings together works that focus on our natural surroundings. An opening flower in an urban garden, an almost unearthly landscape or the visible impact of man on the nature of which he is a part - all are to be found in EARTH.

For this exhibition we made a conscious decision to exclude humans from centre stage. The world you enter here is a green world, where man is a mere observer. Let us lead you along a green alley past the most diverse landscapes, compiled from the collection, many of whose creators have been zooming in on the nature that surrounds us throughout their working lives.

For centuries humans have done their utmost to rise above themselves and their environment. We have constructed staircases, bridges, airplanes and spaceships to gain a view of the greater whole, and the immense heights that we reached convinced us that we were actually freed from our natural surroundings.

The current climate crisis taking place before our very eyes makes us realize that it is time to come down to earth, to land. Time to stop gazing fixedly at the vistas above us and to enter into a symbiosis with the landscape of which we form a part. Time to realize that all this time paradise is to be found, not beyond, above or behind us, but at our very feet.

EARTH – A collective landscape brings together artists who in their own unique ways explore such themes as landscape, ecological awareness and the artificial distinction between man and nature. The exhibition offers new paths to follow and the space to stand still. By for example Herbert Brandl's evocative landscape, Lin de Mol's gentle reindeer moss installation Art=Medicine, or the sinister landscape simulation Performing a Landscape by Jan Robert Leegte.

The AkzoNobel Art Foundation invites you to choose your own path and become an element of this collective landscape. To tumble, like the protagonist of Jacco Olivier’s Perpetuum, between heaven and earth, then landing safely at last.

Included in the exhibition will be work by:

Dan Asher, Bob Bonies, Herbert Brandl, Stefano Caimi, Chan Chiao Chun, Jonat Deelstra, Keith Edmier, Hadassah Emmerich, Renske van Enckevort, Allard van Hoorn, Axel Hütte, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Job Koelewijn, Mirte van Laarhoven, Jan Robert Leegte, Tony Matelli, Erik Mattijssen, Inge Meijer, Jos van Merendonk, Matthias Meyer, Monika Michalko, Ingo Mittelstaedt, Lin de Mol, Jan van Munster, Otobong Nkanga, Jacco Olivier, Malin Persson, Michelle Piergoelam, Bart Pols, misha de ridder, Andrei Roiter, David Roth, Kyra Sacks, Sam Samiee, Karin Sander, Pär Strömberg, Alejandra Venegas, Marijke van Warmerdam, Agnes Waruguru, Jongsuk Yoon, Robert Zandvliet.