Haines Gallery – Andy Goldsworthy: For Olle & Once The Ocean Floor With Four Artists

Andy 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. 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. 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. Working across a range of photographic processes in Once The Ocean Floor, four artists foreground the natural world not simply as subject, but as an active force – an agent, collaborator, and historian. Once the Ocean Floor includes a suite of new prints made during John Chiara’s 2025 artist residency in Georgia, capturing wooded meadows and drifting clouds, including a mysterious, shaded thicket of trees and two meditative 10-inch by eight-inch works that find quiet beauty in nature. Linda Connor’s eponymous series depicting the exquisitely craggy rock faces of Ladakh, India – Himalayan terrain that lay submerged beneath an ancient ocean more than 100 million years ago – and related works reflect a long-term engagement with the elemental forces of spirit and nature that continuously reshape our world. David Maisel’s “Spiralling” series offers an aerial perspective on the environmental crisis rapidly unfolding across Utah’s Great Salt Lake region. Through his lens, endangered landscapes are imbued with a disquieting allure. Created directly within the landscape, Meghann Riepenhoff’s “State Shift” cyanotypes underscore nature’s force as an agent of transformation, while inviting viewers to consider the personal and collective shifts needed to preserve their shared home. Together, the artists in this exhibition propose a re-orientation of photographic practice – one in which authorship is shared with and inspired by the natural world. Across these works, the earth is not merely represented, but an active participant. In this sense, photography becomes less a tool of depiction than a site of encounter, where the forces of nature, human intervention, and material processes converge.