Dan Arps
A Winter Garden
December 13 - 23, 2000
Part scavenger and part hobbyist constructor,
Dan Arps creates sprawling installations which colonize space, crawling up walls, hanging
off windows and ceilings, and spilling out doors. From meticulous cardboard and paper
constructions to warehouse buckets and $2 shop detitrus, Arps gathers material seemingly
randomly, yet each installation is painstakingly built up and layered.
Responding to his upbringing
in Christchurch - 'the garden city', Dan Arps' installation merges historical
and mythical representations of the garden with aspects of actual gardens
the artist has encountered. Excavating sources that run the gamut from
his own backyard to the Garden of Eden, Arps' project locates the garden
as a point where nature is contained, removed from danger of predators,
the darkness of unmapped terrain, and sheltered from the unpredictability
of extreme weather patterns.
Named after a 1972 installation from Belgian proto-conceptualist Marcel Broodthayers,
A Winter Garden questions the notions of nature and culture as
distinct entities, using the garden as a meeting ground for the
two, collapsing boundaries and making new and unlikely connections.
Reviews & Essays
Fresh - A series profiling
Contemporary New Zealand Practitioners
Essay by Lee Devenish
in The Physics Room Annual
2001
ISBN 0-9582359-1-0
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