Meg Webster

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Through October 14

Meg Webster, veteran earth artist, has long been involved with building gardens in city sites, and in making sculptures which use natural materials. She shows two installation pieces at Paula Cooper. You can the welcoming garden of Large Pool through the open front door of the Paula Cooper gallery. Large goldfish swim in black rubber channels mounted in a metal frame. The plants set in the borders of the lagoon formed by the frame turn towards the sunlight. Two islands, one containing plants, the other with a source for the circulating water, are set in the center.

This channel runs in deep inside the gallery. Beyond the far side of the lagoon, in the second pool, Interacting Falls: Plain and Shooter, water descends from a copper tube and from a flat plate. And further back, under the grand high ceiling, is a square model of a sand dunes made of fired clay. Webster’s installation displays her highly subtle reinterpretation of the uses of nature in visual art.

Nature and the city traditionally were placed in opposition. Looking at their Constables, urban collectors in pre-modern culture could imagine being in country houses, immersed in that nature represented in their paintings. We know that in an industrial society such escape from the city is no longer really possible.

Webster has spoken of her admiration for Robert Smithson, whose earthworks were set outside the art gallery and museum. By comparison, these installations readily fit within the boundaries of Paula Cooper’s space. When Webster uses plants and moving water in an industrial-style installation, she reminds us that nature itself now has become artificial. Unlike Smithson, she does not think we can still find true nature outside the city.

Her gritty channels are left open to display the plumbing and lighting apparatus needed to keep the fish and plants alive. Her waterfall reveals the mechanical pumping apparatus required to circulate the water. And her sand dunes are assembled on a sloping grid.

Deconstructing the old opposition between countryside and city, between nature and the artificial realm of culture, she displays what might be called the machinery of living nature. Her exhibition reminds us how artificial nowadays are any rigid borders between art and nature.




David Carrier