Casting a Glance: Dancing with Smithson brings together eighteen contemporary artists in conversation with the visionary mind of Robert Smithson, whose radical rethinking of art’s relationship with the Earth continues to shape generations. Taking its title from Smithson’s declaration that “a great artist can make art by simply casting a glance,” the exhibition invites artists to move alongside his legacy—resisting, improvising, and extending his restless rhythm. From his early drawings that questioned the ideals of European Modernism to his later meditations on entropy and geology, Smithson remains a pivotal figure whose ideas transcend time and form.
Anchored by Mirror Displacement Indoors (1969)—an uprooted tree intertwined with mirrors that reflects both decay and endurance—the exhibition underscores Smithson’s enduring fascination with transformation. Around this central work orbit pieces that echo, counter, and expand his vision. Leonor Antunes and Álvaro Urbano explore the mirrored lives of trees; Delcy Morelos and An-My Lê engage with earth and landscape as living memory; and Ana Mendieta’s ephemeral earthworks resonate with Smithson’s Hypothetical Continents. Giuseppe Penone, Tony Cragg, Pierre Huyghe, and James Welling each reimagine the natural and the artificial in dialogue with Smithson’s sculptural poetics.
Further exchanges unfold between Nairy Baghramian’s suspended forms and Smithson’s hand-built minimalism, between Daniel Boyd’s layered imagery and Smithson’s explorations of myth and body. Works by Julie Mehretu and Steve McQueen deepen the meditation on time, matter, and memory, while Tacita Dean’s salt studies echo the crystalline landscapes of Spiral Jetty. Three film collaborations between Smithson and Nancy Holt—East/Coast West Coast, Swamp, and Spiral Jetty—enrich this dialogue, offering a moving reflection on process, place, and perception.
In Casting a Glance, Smithson’s inquiries into entropy, permanence, and the poetics of decay unfold as a living conversation—an ever-evolving dance between artist, earth, and time.
Image: Robert Smithson gathering material for Nonsite “Line of Wreckage” Bayonne, New Jersey (1968) Photograph: Nancy Holt © Nancy Holt



