Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape

The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape, a group exhibition exploring nature in contemporary artistic practices, ranging from the poetic to the political. Francis Alÿs, Joseph Beuys, Boyle Family, Chagos Research Initiative, Anya Gallaccio, Michele Horrigan, Sanam Khatibi, Ishmael Marika, Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan, Richard Mosse, Winfred Rembert, Alexis Rockman, Clement Siatous, and Yang Yongliang, engage with the environment through a range of aesthetic and theoretical approaches. The exhibition will run at The 8th Floor from September 18 to December 13, 2025.

Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape charts philosophical developments on our relationship to landscape from Edmund Burke’s theories of the sublime and the European Romantic movement, to postindustrial detachment from ecosystems and our hubris in the face of climate change today. It traces a shift away from sonderstellung, the concept that humans are placed above nature, to solastalgia, a recent term describing the existential dread caused by dramatic environmental changes—a phenomenon that indicates a passivity and sentimentality we can scarcely afford in the Anthropocene. The pertinent question is whether nature can survive the damage we have inflicted upon it. 

An international reengagement with landscape has been evident for some time in contemporary art. In Winfred Rembert’s paintings and Ishmael Marika’s films, we see a forceful removal from, and involuntary attachment to land—for Rembert, in the context of the Jim Crow American South, and for Marika, a personal retelling of the Yirrkala land rights movement in 1960/70s Australia. The Chagos Research Initiative and Clement Siatous address the ongoing colonial/postcolonial fate of the Chagos Islands, while Boyle Family utilizes a range of technologies to sculpturally map time-specific global geographies. Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan reflect on the legacy of European Romanticism, excavating the crisis of national identity in a postcolonial setting. 

A range of environmental issues are explored by multiple artists in the exhibition. Richard Mosse examines the Amazon in his photographs of Rondonia, Brazil; and Michele Horrigan takes a more politically blatant look at aluminum refinement on Aughinish Island in Ireland. Together, these artists document the shifting of nature and devastation of rural communities, Indigenous territories, and urban neighborhoods in the Anthropocene. 

Through biting satirical paintings Sanam Khatibi exposes some of the most destructive human traits, enacted by people in pastoral settings. Remorseless reshaping of ecosystems is evident in the works of Alexis Rockman, who highlights the plight of animals as a direct result of ongoing human encroachment. Yang Yongliang attempts regeneration in his fantastical conflations of cities and landscapes depicting Shanghai and New York. The poetics of collaboration are elaborated on by Francis Alÿs, who, aided by 500 volunteers, literally moved a mountain, both to criticize governmental inefficiency and give us hope for our fragile species’ ability to collaborate. In order to reintroduce wonder to audiences, Anya Gallaccio utilizes the senses, examining the natural entropy and the repetitious nature of life and death in her practice. Her fascination with these cycles was shared by Joseph Beuys, whose ideas of progress embraced environmentalism and employed activist strategies to guarantee a better and more inclusive future.

According to Thomas Cole, 19th-century painter and founder of the Hudson River School, “To walk with nature as a poet is the necessary condition of a perfect artist.” The artists in Romance, Regret, and Regeneration in Landscape are visual poets who challenge dominant ideologies, question unregulated capitalism, and instill wonder, reminding us of the sublime we need to actively save. Perhaps we can learn from Joseph Beuys’ philosophy that everyone is an artist and can harness the power this identity bestows. With the environmental predicaments we face, especially in terms of regeneration, we need to ask what we can accomplish together.