Andy Goldsworthy: For Olle
Past exhibition
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Haines Gallery proudly presents For Olle, an exhibition of new works by Andy Goldsworthy (b. 1956, Cheshire, UK; lives and works in Dumfriesshire, Scotland). Marking our 12th solo exhibition with the celebrated artist, For Olle is dedicated to Goldsworthy’s longtime friend and collaborator, Olle Lundberg, whose recent passing informs the exhibition. Bringing together a suite of related photographic works and a clay sculpture created for this presentation, the show offers an intimate reflection on materiality and memory, loss and renewal.
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Goldsworthy has built an unparalleled reputation for his sculptures, installations, photographs, and films that explore our relationship to the natural world. His ephemeral works, a fundamental part of his practice since the late 1970s, are created outdoors using the materials and conditions of the site, such as earth, rocks, flowers, and leaves; these works often last only a short time before they are altered or erased by natural processes. Made almost daily, their beauty and meaning are bound up with the forces that they embody: labor, temporality, impermanence, and cycles of growth, decay, and regeneration.
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At the heart of the exhibition are three photographic diptychs from Goldsworthy’s series Fallen Elm (2009–present), documenting ephemeral works made in relation to a single, fallen elm tree near the artist’s home in Scotland. Since dying of Dutch elm disease and eventually collapsing across a stream nearly two decades ago, this fallen tree has been the slow-changing site and subject of many of Goldsworthy’s ephemeral works, exploring its contours and gradual transformation. As he shares in a recent interview, “It’s difficult to describe the tree as being dead because it has generated so much life as it has decayed. I like to think that the work I have made is also part of the life that it has generated.”On view for the first time, the Fallen Elm works in For Olle were made in November 2025, in the days following the loss of San Francisco architect Olle Lundberg. Each pair of images features delicate yellowed elm leaves and grass stalks that Goldsworthy has arranged along the trunk of the fallen elm in various constellations: a line, screen, or starburst.
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Complementing these photographs is a new sculpture created for the exhibition, comprising a tabletop coated in white clay. Natural patterns of cracks and fissures emerge across the surface as it ages and dries over the duration of the exhibition, revealing glimpses of the table beneath, and the sculpture’s inherent fragility. Dried clay works are a hallmark of Goldsworthy’s practice, each a meditation on the passage of time, and the beauty that can be found in natural processes.
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Photo: John Halpern
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Installation Photography: Shaun Roberts
