Andy Goldsworthy: Firehouse

Haines is thrilled to present Firehouse, a solo exhibition by Andy Goldsworthy inaugurating the gallery’s new location at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC), on view from March 12 through May 28, 2022.  This site-responsive show celebrates 30 years of collaboration between the artist and gallerist Cheryl Haines, and is Goldsworthy’s first exhibition in San Francisco since 2017. 

Andy Goldsworthy has an unparalleled reputation for ephemeral works and permanent installations addressing notions of process, temporality, and our connection with the earth. At FMCAC, Goldsworthy will create several new works, covering an entire wall in Haines’ new gallery with cracked white clay and coating the windows of FMCAC’s nearby Firehouse in red earth, the site of the latter lending its name to the eponymous exhibition. 

Intended as a permanent fixture in the gallery, Goldsworthy’s white clay wall will continue to fissure until it fully dries, changing in appearance as it ages—a meditation on materiality, the passage of time, and the impactful and unpredictable forces of the natural world. In keeping with the artist’s method of sourcing materials from the surrounding environment, the installation will be made with white kaolin clay from Amador County, once the heart of California’s gold rush. This work will be realized with the generous support of San Francisco’s famed Heath Clay Studio, under the direction of Heath Executive Design Director Blaise Bertrand.

Complementing the clay wall, Goldsworthy will also create a temporary installation in FMCAC’s historic Firehouse, coating its windows with red earth sourced from foothills of the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California. In Goldsworthy’s lexicon, red earth often references the power and violence of our natural world. Here, the russet-colored slip will cast an orange-red glow that changes throughout the day with the outdoor light, evoking the transformative power of fire itself and highlighting the precarity and resilience of our surroundings. 

Both clay and earth have become integral materials in Goldsworthy’s oeuvre since his first major US solo show was held at Haines Gallery in 1992, an exhibition marking the beginning of a long, fruitful relationship between artist and gallerist. These two new works at FMCAC echo this history, as well as Tree Fall, Goldsworthy’s 2013 installation within the nearby Presidio, and the original clay wall he created in 1996 for Haines at its former home in downtown San Francisco.

Additional artworks will be made on-site or selected for inclusion by the artist in response to his experience of working in the gallery’s new home during a time fraught with global challenges and conflict. Central to the exhibition is a long table covered with charred wood collected from Goldsworthy’s iconic Spire, the towering sculpture in the San Francisco Presidio that was partially burned in a fire in 2020. Here, its remains are converted into an installation that invites meditation on themes of loss and fortification, remembrance and renewal. 

Goldsworthy’s process — of arriving at artistic discoveries through the act of making, always in dialogue with the environment — is a hallmark of the artist’s acclaimed practice. It also mirrors the historic collaboration between the artist and Haines, one characterized by fearless creative exploration. As Goldsworthy observes, “Cheryl and I have worked so long and done so much together that it defies explanation. My exhibition for the gallery’s new space in Fort Mason will articulate something of the spirit in which Cheryl and I have always worked — stepping into the unknown, rising to new challenges and taking risks.”

Reflecting on this pivotal moment, Cheryl Haines states, “I am thrilled to celebrate the opening of our new space with longtime gallery artist Andy Goldsworthy. Firehouse draws from our incredible history together and points toward a future marked by bold and innovative collaboration with artists that will illuminate the leading ideas of our present.”