Back to the Earth

Luke Agada, Jackie Amézquita, Miguel Arzabe, Saif Azzuz, Jackie Castillo, Lenz Geerk, Aaron Glasson, Koyoltzintli, Suchitra Mattai, Evan Nesbit, Wendy Red Star and Noah Schneiderman.

Roberts Projects is pleased to present Back to the Earth, a group exhibition of artists whose work emerges from a symbiotic relationship with their environment. Featuring painting, drawing, sculpture and installation alongside a rotating selection of video works, this exhibition considers how artists use organic materials, found objects and elemental forces to engage in an ongoing dialogue with the natural world.

For centuries, human civilization has harnessed the Earth’s natural resources to develop tools, architecture and technology; over time, the environment reclaims and alters these man-made creations through erosion, weathering and other natural phenomena. This cycle of degradation and regeneration transforms the landscape into a new entity, allowing artists to re-envision corroded forms by imbuing them with aesthetic value and philosophical meaning.

Each work in the exhibition offers a unique perspective on this dynamic exchange. Artists that model sustainable methods of production glean their surroundings for materials to create assemblage works with profound epistemic resonance. Paintings and sculptures incorporating handmade dyes, found objects and raw pigments evoke lines, shapes and textures that are found in nature while transcending boundaries between abstraction and surrealism. Other works reflect on how these environmental forces are not merely observed, but internalized—how the land becomes an extension of the self, even as we continue to shape and inhabit it. Environmental phenomena such as sedimentation and seed dispersal parallel Indigenous histories of migration, displacement and assimilation, which are echoed in works made from soil and other organic matter.

As explained by John Berger, "Art does not exist in isolation; it grows, transforms and decays alongside the landscapes that nurture it." Back to the Earth fosters a deeper understanding around these ineffable forces of nature, and the multitude of ways that artists merge with and draw inspiration from the land.