Maya Lin and More at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Maya Lin, “Blue Lake Pass,” 2006, Duraflake particleboard. Courtesy of the LA Times (Collen Chartie).

Systematic Landscapes, a traveling exhibition of work by Season 1 artist Maya Lin, is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through June 30, 2008. The exhibition focuses on a trio of large-scale sculptural installations—2×4 Landscape, Water Line, and Blue Lake Pass (pictured above)—that wed the artist’s deep interest in forces and forms of nature with her long-standing investigation into sculptural forms. Watch a video featuring the installation of 2×4 Landscape at MCA San Diego here.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, which took the MCA San Diego exhibition as its starting point, Lin discussed her current project for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Calling it her “last memorial,” the commissioned piece will grieve for the animals, birds and plants driven into extinction—and warn of the urgency of acting now to halt the devastation. Envisioning the piece as a “multisite chronicle, including photography and video, at places around the world and with a commemorative list of names of extinct species,” it is scheduled to launch on Earth Day in April 2009.

MCA San Diego’s attention to nature and environmental issues in contemporary art continues this August with Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet. Art 21 artists Mark Dion (Season 4) and Ann Hamilton (Season 1) are included in this collaborative multi-year exhibition project that sent eight leading artists to UNESCO World Heritage sites around the globe to create new work informed and inspired by their experiences. Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Rigo 23, Dario Robleto, Diana Thater and Xu Bing will also participate. Human/Nature is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, in partnership with the international conservation organization Rare.