Alan Sonfist
Autobiography of a Time Landscape

For this show, Alan Sonfist continued his international project, Gene Enclosures. The artist explains, “As ‘technological progress’ is moving at a faster and faster rate, our natural forests are diminishing throughout the world. Through the creation of a series of Gene Enclosures with photographs and elements of the world of forests, future generations will be able to reconstruct extinct forests.” In Gene Enclosure the artist exhibited photographs and collections of forest material from areas surrounding New York City in order to show how the forest of New York City has once looked. The artist also exhibited a series of views of New York City from the earliest drawings to the latest satellite photograph together with childhood drawings and autobiographical material relating to the artist’s experience of natural and urban environments, thus setting his organic growth in a parallel relationship to the “perceptual growth” of the city as a living entity (i.e. the evolution of how the city was perceived and depicted). With the cooperation of the local government, Sonfist is continuing his ongoing project of recreating a pre-colonial forest for New York City.

Excerpted from Brentano, R., & Savitt, M. (1981). 112 Workshop, 112 Greene Street: History, artists & artworks. New York: New York University Press.