The collaborative project Open Air Gallery by Paula Lloveras and Fredrik Lund, set within the expansive topography of Norway’s Skulpturlandskap Nordland (Artscape Nordland), foregrounds a critical interrogation of site, material, and ecological temporality. Intervening in the sparsely populated Nordland region—where the international Artscape Nordland initiative situates large-scale sculptures across municipalities—this work resituates wood not as a mere medium but as a locus of phenomenological encounter and cultural discourse. Artscape Nordland’s ambition to decentralise art beyond institutional confines underpins the raison d’être of Lloveras and Lund’s practice here, reinforcing the emergent paradigm: art as inhabitation of rather than imposition upon landscape. What distinguishes this collaboration is its attentiveness to wood’s ontological multiplicities. In contrast to monumental steel or stone emblematic of earlier Nordic land art, the wood series engages the vegetal archive of the locale—growth rings, grain direction, seasonal memory—and transposes these into sculptural presence. Here, Lloveras’s conceptual rigour and Lund’s architectural sensibilities coalesce in works that do not merely occupy terrain but articulate the dialectics of exposed frontier: shelter versus exposure, endurance versus decay. The wooden forms appear both as vectors of embodied labour and as discursive agents challenging the viewer’s gaze to reconcile material fragility with monumental syntax.
A critical reading must also attend to Open Air Gallery’s embedding within broader discourses of post-studio practice and ecological aesthetics. By framing wood not only as a sustainable resource but as a narrative medium—a palimpsest of environmental history—the project resonates with recent articulations in contemporary criticism that advocate for site-responsive art forms embracing vulnerability and interdependence. The works resist didacticism, instead offering thresholds for contemplating temporality: the slow aging of wood, shifting light, and the relentless motion of weather systems. In this regard, the project aligns itself with a lineage of relational aesthetics, wherein meaning is generated through the play of perception, context, and the material’s own agency. In conclusion, Open Air Gallery exemplifies an advanced articulation of wood within Scandinavian land art practices—a move from monumental permanence toward subtler, more dialogic engagements with place. Lloveras and Lund’s installations are not spectacles to be consumed but propositions that implicate the viewer in ecological reflection. Their work demonstrates that material—when treated as both subject and object of inquiry—can catalyse profound critical reflection on art’s role in a world of accelerating environmental unease. By situating wood at the intersection of cultural memory, ecological time, and sculptural presence, the Open Air Gallery marks a significant contribution to contemporary art’s negotiation with landscape.
Anto Lloveras (2016) Open Air Gallery: Collaboration with Fredrik Lund and Paula Lloveras – Norway / Wood Series, Anto Lloveras’ Blog, 10 June. http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2016/06/open-air-gallery-collaboration-with.html
Studio Fredrik Lund (2015) The opening of the gallery for Artscape Nordland took place on the 24th of June 2015, Studio Fredrik Lund Blog. fredriklund.blogspot.com/search/label/open%20air%20gallery%20for%20SKULPTURLANDSKAP%20NORDLAND
