Exploring The State of Nature

As questions concerning human's relationship with nature took on a surging urgency in the early 1990s, The Storefront for Art and Architecture embarked on a series of ecology-themed exhibitions. The series includes the following shows: 1. Earth, Air, and Water Studies, 1989; 2. Formalhaut, 1990; 3. Post-Consumerism, 1990; 4. Degrees of Paradise: The State of Heaven, 1991; 5. Formations of Erasure: Earthworks and Entropy, 2001.

Formalhaut is a West German team comprised of architects Gabriela Seifert, Götz Stöckmann, and artist Ottmar Hörlat. Through constructions, the team was seeking to challenge the presuppositions of the built environment.

In 1986, the Art Commission of the city of New York forged a partnership between the Public Art Fund and the 14th Street-Union Square Local Development Corporation in an attempt to solicit new design proposals for the city’s newsstands through a competition. 

The exhibition featured artist Mel Chin's work. Throughout the exhibition, the rug was destroyed or repaired in response to the condition of the ozone layer. 

"The dreamers are better, not so geometrical, so apt to turn everything ... the air, the sky, to Persian rugs." - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

The show is a contemporary photographic display about the interaction of earthworks with the sculpting forces of erosion. The exhibit features a selection of earthworks, represented in large coloraturas photographic prints, where the earthworks have been transformed by natural and human erosion to become a new kind of landform - a formation that blends the intentionality of the artist’s hand with the subsequent “entropic” forces of decay. The exhibition included documentation of works by Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, William Bennett, and James Pierce.