Agnes Denes’ second solo exhibition at acb Gallery focuses on her earliest land art piece entitled Rice/Tree/Burial, first performed in 1968 as a private ritual, then reiterated one decade later. As Denes’ first exercise in Eco-Logic, a notion coined by her to highlight the importance of ecological thinking and action, the event marked the artist’s commitment to environmental issues and human concerns. Considered to be the first ecological public art work, Rice/Tree/Burial comprised planting rice to represent life and growth, chaining trees to indicate interference with life and natural processes, and burying the artist’s Haiku poetry to symbolise the idea or concept, i.e creation itself. The three interconnected and interdependent acts of this eco-philosophical piece constituted the first expression of triangulation (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) in Denes’ practice, that would also unfold in her early programmatic drawings and later works.   

The exhibition was realized in cooperation with Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York.