A 70-foot-long scientific sample of rock and earth taken from almost 6,000 feet underground, David Brook’s site-specific sculpture is not only powerfully evocative of Land Art’s formalist tradition, but also records massive amounts of the Earth’s history. That history is abstracted, legible almost solely by the geologically knowledgable. And because of the work’s massive scale (spanning from the ceiling of the second floor, down across the gallery, and down to an open door into a garden patio) even the inscrutable fragments of rock and siltstone the work is composed of are not fully visible to visitors. Despite its immensity, the work is small by geological standards — a revealing sliver from which a great amount about the world’s long history is deducible from the canted rocky skewer. Brooks’s work can also be found permanently installed at the Storm King Art Center. Through December 6, 2014. NOAH DILLON
David Brooks, Repositioned Core, 2014. University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts: Visual Arts Center
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