"Andrew Rogers: Time and Space" on View at the 18th Street Arts Center

Written by Geoffrey Henderson Wednesday, 27 April 2011 22:45

Santa Monica, CA.- From May 7 through 28 May , the 18th Street Arts Center will present "Andrew Rogers: Time and Space", a selection of 68 large-scale photographs of Rogers’s ground-breaking outdoor art project. The exhibition will showcase aerial and satellite photographs of 47 sculptures created over a period of 13 years, making it the first time these images will be publicly displayed together. Also on view will be a looped, 40-minute film that documents the artist’s extraordinary process. Rogers has spent the last 13 years engaging over 6,700 people in 13 countries on seven continents to create stone sculptures in deserts, fjords, gorges, national parks and on mountainous slopes. By building structures with local significance, and providing sustaining support to maintain the mammoth artworks, Rogers engages the communities where his works are created.

Following each project’s completion, Rogers photographs the work himself either from a hot air balloon, a helicopter 500 feet aloft or from a satellite stationed 480 miles above ground. Rhythms of Life forms a chain of 47 stone sculptures, or geoglyphs, positioned at 13 sites around the world. Constructed of earth and rocks, and following the contours of the natural landscape, Rogers’s land sculptures each measure up to 430,000 square feet in area up to 14 feet tall. Designed in conjunction with select architects and a team of local workers, the structures refer to the physical building blocks of history and civilization, while addressing the cycle of life and the interconnection of humanity throughout time and space. Rogers began the project in Israel’s Arava Desert in 1998 and has since created artworks on five continents: in Israel, Chile, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Iceland, China, India, Turkey, Nepal, Slovakia, the United States, Kenya and Antarctica.

At each site, the project is initiated with a celebration that draws on local customs, such as traditional dancing and singing in China, sharing of wine and coca in Chile or the sacrifice of a llama in Bolivia. To create the land sculptures, Rogers and his crews battle the elements, including freezing snow in Iceland, 110-degree heat in an Israeli desert and altitudes of 14,000 feet in the Bolivian Andes. The project in Turkey is the world’s largest contemporary land art park.  It includes twelve massive stone structures, most built by hand. The lines of these structures measure approximately 4 miles in length and are comprised of over 10,500 tons of stone. The park spans a mountain valley over a distance of 1.5miles.

Andrew Rogers is one of Australia’s most distinguished and internationally recognized contemporary artists. He exhibits internationally and his critically acclaimed sculptures are in numerous private and prominent public collections in Australia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States of America. The Australian sculptor  began his personal artistic journey almost 30 years ago as a painter. But in the late 1980s, after numerous visits to the Musee Rodin, in Paris, he decided to give up painting to take up sculpture. "With sculpture we learn to perceive, to recognize differences, to clarify, to make a decision, and eventually one can see what it is that matters to create a form." Andrew Rogers specialises in monumental and landmark sculptures both figurative and abstract and has carried out an impressive number of commissions and has major works not only in Australia, but also in San Francisco, New Jersey, Dallas, Vienna, Kobe, Osaka, Singapore, Athens, Jerusalem, Taipei, Berkshire UK, and Machu Picchu in Peru. They range from a small intimate bronze, Resistance, presented to Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna, to Evolution a huge complex work  43 metres high. He has received many international commissions and his works are included in private and public collections throughout in Australia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. Rhythms of Life is his most ambitious project to date. Visit the artist's website at ... www.andrewrogers.com


The 18th Street Arts Center came into existence in 1988 as a complex of artist live-work spaces and the headquarters of High Performance magazine. High Performance magazine, ceased publication in 1998 and folded into API’s new Community Arts Network on the Internet, supporting artists working with communities. Over the next 15 years, 18th Street formalized its Residency Program, developed an International Artist-in-Residence Exchange Program, a Presenting Program to curate and produce exhibitions, and an Arts Education Program. In 2003, 18th Street changed its name to 18th Street Arts Center and today is a respected destination for national and international artists wishing to publish, perform, work and/or exhibit in Los Angeles County. 18th Street’s prominent arts programs have hosted and sponsored over 150 group and solo exhibitions serving 700 artists since 1988. They have featured many of Los Angeles’s most interesting emerging and mid-career artists at crucial points when such recognition made a real difference in their careers. The roster is a cross section of the multicultural population of artists in Los Angeles and includes Lita Albuquerque, Alex Donis, Lisa Adams, Robbie Conal, Charles Karubian, Michael Horse, Alex Gray, Francisco Letelier, Judy Baca, Barabara T. Smith, Ron Athey, Diane Gamboa, John Outterbridge, Catherine Opie, Denise Uehara, Mark Spencer, Mark Greenfield, Sheila Pinkel, and Hirokazu Kosaka, to name just a few. Artists and organizations in residence at 18th Street have been recognized for their outstanding work by the Guggenheim Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Getty Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. 18th Street Arts Center’s International Program is also a worldwide leader in artist exchange programs and provides one of the few international artist exchange programs in Los Angeles. 18th Street has hosted artists from two dozen countries. Through 18th Street’s exhibitions, workshops, and community festivals, the organization encourages and supports the creation of cutting-edge contemporary art, and fosters collaboration and interaction between artists and arts organizations locally, nationally and internationally. The curatorial focus of 18th Street has remained constant throughout the last fifteen years, with a unique mandate to concentrate on encouraging the careers of emerging and under-represented mid-career artists. Visit the art center's website at ... http://18thstreet.org

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