Jan Henle

Henle’s actual working of the landscape parallels to some degree the earth works of Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria and the late Robert Smithson, all of whom have used the landscape as their studio. There is, however, an important distinction. Henle’s works constitute an attempt to transfer the paradoxical sense of a direct presence of the land, on one hand, and a provocative emptiness on the other. This is not art constructed on the land or an allusion to it through documentation.

For the artist, the simple physical act of plowing, harrowing and shoveling is at the heart of these images. This is essentially a ritualistic labor, a way of breaking down one’s intentions to make “art,” to accomplish what Henle speaks of as “the removal of I.” At the same time, he sees it as a means of “knowing” and connecting with the land in a direct way. Henle’s tools — plow, shovel, rake and eventually camera — are his drawing instruments. One might think of Henle’s “drawing” as a kind of gardening and the images themselves as gardens of a very personal sort. The obvious analogy exists in the image of a Zen monk raking, day after day, his austere gardens of sand and rock. Indeed, Henle’s attempts to verbalize the character of his work continually stress the meditative and intuitive as opposed to the intellectual aspects of art. “On a basic level,” Henle has said, “this is an endeavor to see what can happen through living the way I am living. I don’t want to think about what to do. I hope the work will happen through a certain discipline and effort and no effort at the same time — life drawn on film.”

Michael Auping, Jan Henle Topographical Film Drawings, 1988. Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York