If the classic English garden is an artwork of landscape representing an idealized, pastoral nature, curator Francesco Manacorda’s exhibition in the heart of London promises to offer a landscape of artworks reflecting a nature that is every day less natural and more aberrant. The Barbican will present more than eighty works, in a variety of media, by twenty-five artists and architects—from Joseph Beuys, R. Buckminster Fuller, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, and the Ant Farm collective to a younger generation of practitioners, including EXYZT, Heather and Ivan Morison, R&Sie(n), Philippe Rahm, and Simon Starling. By extending the installation onto the surrounding grounds, Manacorda and co. will necessarily provoke thoughts about the radical (and threatening) artwork that nature itself has become. |