The human desire for the world of ice and snow seems to be an unsolvable riddle. Not only we, but also the artists are deeply involved in such a white and flawless charm.

Francis Alÿs

A man who pushes ice

The work of Francis Alÿs (1959 - Now, Belgian) is often an act that requires a great deal of interpretation. He has always planted many dark threads in his work: political metaphors about Latin America, an exploration of the uselessness of performance, the idea that art is not necessarily creation but may only be witness, the fallacy of words that create urban fables...

Acts that at first seem absurd always have a deep textual message behind them, which can be difficult to decipher without background knowledge, and this is why many performance arts have difficulty resonating. This kind of art that aims to express a point of view often has a very abstract and obscure visual form that cannot be read directly, after all, the "concept" is abstract, it is not like a painting, the visual of the work itself is the expression, performance art takes the "concept" first, and then translates This "transformation" can easily become a wall between the audience and the artist.

The Paradox of Practice (1997), is a bitter satire of minimalist sculpture, and seems to be an unintentional but misguided parody of the "object school". He pushes the ice cube until it melts, and the melting and pushing movements create a sense of form that is both humorous and serious.

This action is a synthesis of several themes that Alÿs explored in the mid-1990s, through the "boring" sounding action of pushing a block of ice through the center of Mexico City for more than nine hours until he was left with a small puddle of water. hardships. This neighborhood, like the thousands of blocks of street businesses that are delivered to various parts of the city every morning, is a cunning means of symbolizing the melting away of the general object of contemporary art.

Andy Goldsworthy

A moment in time

Andy Goldsworthy is a sculptor, photographer and environmental artist who lives and works in Scotland. He often creates different sculptures and land art in nature and the countryside, depending on the conditions of the site.

Earth art is an art movement that began in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an inseparable link between the earth's landscape and the artwork itself, and as a form of art created in nature with materials taken directly from the natural environment. Earth art works often retain the objective property of being altered and eroded by natural forces, resulting in many early works that existed only briefly and can now only be found in documentaries or photographic archives.

"Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, and I try to tap into these energies through my work. I need the impact of touch, the resistance of place, material and weather, and the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of flux and this flux is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in materials, seasons, and weather. Each piece grows, stays, and decays. Process and decay are implied. The ephemeral in my work reflects what I find in nature."

Andy Goldsworthy often works with brightly colored flowers, icicles, leaves, dirt, pine cones, snow, rocks, twigs, or thorns. These materials are natural, and the artist feels this, believing that one cannot edit nature, but can live with it all as a whole. He tends not to use protective gear or man-made tools, but to feel and shape directly with his hands, teeth, or what he picks up anywhere.

Andy Goldsworthy cuts and connects in a snow-covered world, reinventing white within white. Before leaving the Arctic, he wrote, "This is no one's place, it is a landscape shared by the whole world, a landscape that is always changing. Here, everything I create disappears."

Azuma Makota

Flowers frozen into ice and snow

Azuma Makoto, born in 1976 in Fukuoka, Japan. Before he was an artist, Azuma was a guitarist in a rock band in Tokyo in 1997. But in 2009, he started his own flower store called JARDINS des FLEURS in Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo.

Rather than calling him a florist, he is an expert in the study of flowers or a ghost floral artist. He takes the positive value of life embodied by flowers and plants as the core of his expression. While most florists take the perspective of a person looking at a plant as the starting point of their creation, he takes the plant as the main character, following its original gesture and growing freely with the plant, from tender bud, blooming to decay, each process is an exhibition of visual art. And by combining his own personal and absolutely contemporary vision with Japanese art, he elevates the beauty of plants and flowers to the level of an art work. Combining the art of flower arrangement with visual art, in a single moment of shooting, it becomes a photograph of great beauty. He subverts the traditional art of flower arrangement and tries more possibilities of plants and flowers, such as sending flowers to the sky, sinking them into the sea, freezing them into ice, placing them in the desert, challenging them to survive in various environments, and even sending them to space ......

On a frozen lake on the Notsuke Peninsula (a peninsula on the east coast of Hokkaido), renowned Japanese floral artist Azuma Makoto has created the third botanical sculpture in a series of works called "Frozen Flowers" (in progress). The first version was created on the same site in 2019 and the second in 2021, with each year being slightly different. The artist is interested in how variables such as temperature, wind or snowfall change the surroundings and make each version unique.

An important direction of Makoto's practice is to work side by side with nature, to adapt to it and to maintain a balance in cooperation so that he neither tries to control it nor is controlled by it. Bouquets of flowers and leaves of varying colors and textures solidify into thousands of icicles. The artist and a team of assistants worked through the night to water the sculptures, waiting until the temperature dropped to a minimum so they could form quickly. The next morning, the sun shines on the completed compositions, which then eventually melt them, as designed.

Throughout the year, Makoto sees changes in the region and over time the artist witnesses the effects of climate change on the peninsula. His goal is to continue to install new versions of the frosty flowers in the coming years to document the changing environment.

Basia Irland

Operation Ice Book

Basia Irland is a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico, a Fulbright Scholar, poet, writer, sculptor and installation artist. In 2016, she held a major retrospective "Reading Rivers" at the De Domijnen Museum of Art in the Netherlands. Her two books "The Library of Water" and "Reading Rivers: Eco-Activist Bethea Eiland" contain most of her projects.

American eco-artist and poet Basia Irland has long used the issue of water as a theme in her art. Ice Receding/Books Reseeding is a series of art projects she has been working on around the world that explore climate disruption and water degradation. The project emphasizes the need for collaboration, community collaboration, poetic intervention, and scientific intervention. By releasing seed-filled and ephemeral ice books into the river, these sculpted "magnificent books" will be vehicles for change, representing a shift from art as a commodity to art as a service to communities and ecosystems. As a result of human neglect, most rivers and streams are diseased and polluted to an unmeasurable degree. The plight of the streams is a call to inspire action. In a world where everything is universally connected, it is our collective responsibility to care for others and the environment to ensure that clean water is available for future generations to continue and prosper. Contributing to local river ecology will help create a sustainable and resilient world.

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