WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.- This summer, the Clark Art Institute will present Ground/work 2025, the second edition of its outdoor sculpture exhibition, featuring newly commissioned and site-specific works by six leading international contemporary artists: Yō Akiyama, Laura Ellen Bacon, Aboubakar Fofana, Hugh Hayden, Milena Naef, and Javier Senosiain. The works reflect the artists’ individual practices while engaging directly with the Clark’s 140-acre campus of woodlands, meadows, and trails.

Curated by art historian Glenn Adamson, the exhibition offers a compelling exploration of global craft traditions and contemporary sculpture, pushing beyond the binary of “art versus craft” to present skilled making as a mode of cultural expression and transformation.

The installation of Ground/work 2025 will be fully underway by June and completed by June 28, with the grand opening celebration from July 17 to 19. Works will remain on long-term view until October 2026 and will be accessible day and night as the Clark’s campus is open free of charge twenty-four hours a day.

“We are eagerly anticipating the opening of Ground/work 2025 this summer as we know it will give our visitors a fascinating opportunity to engage with exciting works of contemporary art in the unique context of our magnificent natural setting,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark Art Institute. “The Clark’s campus becomes an accomplice, of sorts, in helping us to see and appreciate each artist's particular vision and the interconnection between art and nature. With this edition of Ground/work, our guest curator Glenn Adamson has intentionally blurred the line that traditionally separates the consideration of art and craft, urging us to appreciate the art that is inherent in all forms of craft. We are certain our visitors will see the beauty in his logic."

“It has been an extraordinary experience to see each of the commissions take shape over the past few months, and now to have them finally arriving on site at the Clark. As the sculptures developed, each one realized through innovative craft processes, their meaning has deepened as well. The completed works not only reflect the skill and vision of these artists, but also some of their most ambitious works to date," said Adamson.

GROUND/WORK 2025 ARTIST PROJECTS

Yō Akiyama: Oscillation: Vertical Garden

Yō Akiyama is among the most respected ceramic artists in Japan. For Ground/work 2025, he will create a major outdoor stoneware sculpture in the form of an inverted cone, approximately thirteen feet in height. After firing, the dark brown clay body is embedded with iron powder, which takes on a rich deep red-rust patina over time. Anchored to the ground and reaching towards the sky, the sculpture is intended to visually interact with nearby trees, which spread their roots as they spread their branches and leaves.

Laura Ellen Bacon: Gathering My Thoughts

Using a practice that equally evokes basket-making and the nest-building of birds, Laura Ellen Bacon will craft a gigantic sculpture, approximately nine-feet long and five-feet high, that will surround a tree in the Clark’s woodlands along a recreational trail. Using willow sourced from Ohio, Bacon will weave overlapping layers to construct an organic shape growing from the rich composition of the woodland floor. She will create her work entirely onsite and in public view in May. Because her sculpture will be made entirely from natural materials, it will biodegrade following the conclusion of the Ground/work 2025 exhibition.

Aboubakar Fofana: Bana Yiriw ni Shi Folow (Trees and Seeds of Life)

Aboubakar Fofana explores natural colorants, particularly indigo, as carriers of contemporary abstraction and ancestral knowledge. Fofana will create a “tree of life” for the exhibition. Inspired by his spiritual belief in the divinity of nature, indigo-dyed rolls of African cotton, representing seeds, will be placed within a branching metal structure that will protect these textile elements through the four seasons of the installation. This is Fofana’s first public sculpture.

Hugh Hayden: the End

Hugh Hayden’s practice is materially diverse, but he is perhaps best known for his works in salvaged wood, with protruding natural branches preserved. For Ground/work 2025, Hayden will create a massive upside-down ribcage out of hemlock trees harvested from a forest near the Clark’s campus. The skeletal form suggests a remnant of some giant’s life (its species cannot be identified from the bones). The sculpture will be situated within the Clark’s woodlands, providing it with partial camouflage while touching on ecological themes of extinction and climate change. Following the exhibition’s run, the work will be allowed to decompose, returning to the woodlands from whence it came.

Milena Naef: Three Times Spanning

Born to a lineage of stone carvers, Milena Naef literally inserts herself into her family’s story of craftsmanship, treating solid marble slabs as a means of poetic self-portraiture. For the exhibition, Naef will sculpt two adjoining pieces of marble with negative spaces for a fallen tree in the Clark’s pasture and for her own body—the latter a subtle trace of her fleeting presence. The work will be sited in the Clark’s pasture, and the marble for the project is sourced from the valley in Switzerland where Naef’s family has long worked. This is her first exhibition in the United States and a considerable increase in scale from previous projects.

Javier Senosiain: Coata III

Mexican artist Javier Senosiain, one of the leading proponents of organic architecture, creates animate structures in polychrome glass mosaic, rooted in Mesoamerican mythology but exemplifying the power of pure imagination. Ground/work 2025 is his first commissioned public work in the United States. Senosiain will create a serpentine design approximately forty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and seventeen feet high. Three separate sections will dip in and out of the Clark’s Schow Pond, creating the illusion of a giant water snake, rising from the unseen depths of the water. Visible from the entry driveway to the Clark campus, the work offers a striking welcome to the exhibition. Due to its massive size, the piece will be assembled on site after being transported from Mexico in four large pieces.