Tree Mountain - A living time capsule Artist: Agnes Denes Location: Pinsiönkankaantie 10, Pinsiö
Artist presentation: Agnes Denes (b.1931 in Budapest, Hungary) was raised in Sweden, and educated in the United State. She is one of the early pioneers of the Environmental and Conceptual Art movements. Denes’ monumental works speak to the challenges of global survival in the context of ecological, cultural, and social issues.
Denes has exhibited extensively at fairs and institutions across the globe, including Documenta VI, three Venice Biennials, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She participates in global conferences, has written five books, and holds two honorary doctorates.
Other works: Wheatfield – A Confrontation was created during a six-month period in the spring, summer, and fall of 1982 when Denes, with the support of the Public Art Fund, planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of rubble-strewn landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan (now the site of Battery Park City and the World Financial Center).
Work Presentation: Tree Mountain, conceived in 1982, is a collaborative, environmental artwork that touches on global, ecological, social, and cultural issues. It is a massive earthwork and land reclamation project that tests our finitude and transcendence, individuality versus teamwork, and measures the value and evolution of a work of art after it has entered the environment. Tree Mountain is designed to unite the human intellect with the majesty of nature.
10 600+ pine trees are planted by different individuals according to an intricate mathematical formula, a combination of the golden section and sunflower/pineapple patterns that meet not only aesthetic criteria, but remain intact after the forest is thinned a few decades from now. The mathematical expansion changes with one's view and movement around and above the mountain, revealing hidden curves and spirals in its symmetrical design. If Tree Mountain is seen from space, the human intellect at work over natural formation becomes evident, yet they blend harmoniously.
Tree Mountain is site-specific. Both shape and size can be adapted to areas of land reclamation and the preservation of forests. Tree Mountain is 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, 28 meters high and elliptical in shape. Height depends on the restrictions of the site and the availability of materials. The site is a gravel pit being reclaimed. The process of bioremediation restores the land from resource extraction use to one in harmony with nature, in this case, the re-creation of a virgin forest. The planting of trees holds the land from erosion, enhances oxygen production and provides home for wildlife. This takes time and it is one of the reasons why Tree Mountain will remain undisturbed for centuries.
Tree Mountain pine trees were chosen because they are typical for this environment. The trees must outlive the present era and, by surviving, carry our concepts into an unknown time in the future. If our civilization as we know it, ends, or as changes occur, there will be a reminder in the form of a unique and majestic forest for our descendants to ponder. They may reflect on an undertaking that did not serve personal needs but the common good, and the highest ideals of humanity and its environment, while benefiting future generations.
This image has recently been presented for example in New York Times / Culture in 2nd of Dec. 2012
Tree Mountain is a collaborative work, from its intricate landscaping and forestry to the funding and contractual agreements for its strange, unheard-of land-use of four centuries. The collaboration expands as eleven thousand people come together to plant the trees that will bear their names and remain their property through succeeding generations. The trees can change ownership—people can leave their tree to their heirs, or transfer it by other means, even be buried under it—but Tree Mountain itself can never be owned or sold, nor can the trees be moved from the forest.
Ownership signifies custodianship. Tree Mountain represents the concept, the soul of the art, while the trees are a manifestation of it. Though they may be collectible works of art, inheritable commodities—gaining stature, fame and value as they grow and age as trees—ultimately neither can be truly owned. One can only become a custodian and assume the moral obligations it implies. But meanwhile they remain part of a larger whole, the forest. The trees are individual segments of a single, limited edition—unique patterns in the design of their universe.
And the trees live on through the centuries - stable and majestic, outliving their owners or custodians who created the patterns and the philosophy, but not the tree. There is a strange paradox in this.
Tree Mountain begins its existence when it is completed as a work of art. As the trees grow and wildlife takes over, as decades and centuries pass, Tree Mountain becomes a most interesting example of how the passing of time affects a work of art. It can become the instrument that measures the evolution of art. Through changing fashions and beliefs, Tree Mountain can pass from being a curiosity to being a shrine, from being the possible remnants of a decadent era to being one of the monuments of a great civilization—a monument not built to the human ego but to benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy.
Tree Mountain is a living time capsule.
On July 5, 1992, World Environment Day, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Government of Finland announced that its Ministry of the Environment and the United Nations Environment Program would sponsor Tree Mountain as Finland's contribution to help alleviate the world's environmental stress.
To be carried out in the Ylöjärvi Municipality, the plan is innovative nationally and worldwide. This is the first time in the world, when an artist has restored environmental damage with environmental art planned for this and future generations—an artwork that is global in scale, international in scope and unsurpassed in duration.