Hans Haacke's 'Grass Grows' Installation Debuts at Museo Burel in Belluno

The Museo d’arte contemporanea Burel in Belluno, directed by Daniela Zangrando, has opened a total installation by Hans Haacke (born 1936 in Cologne), a Golden Lion winner at the 1993 Venice Biennale. The work, 'Grass Grows' (1967–1969), is a conical pyramid of soil mixed with grass seeds that began transforming days after the opening, growing a dense lawn and compelling visitors to return repeatedly. The installation occupies nearly an entire room, forcing viewers to edge along the walls. Set in Belluno, where the Dolomites loom, the piece evokes Dino Buzzati's story 'Le gobbe in giardino' (1966) about mysterious mounds rising in a garden. Zangrando notes that Haacke's works from 1965–1972 involve ants, bean plants, gulls, turtles, grass, chicks, seeds, and goats as agents of growth and change, creating sculptural-biological systems that exchange information, energy, and matter. The installation interrogates the relationship between nature and culture, nature and artifice, and ecology and politics. Despite daily watering, the grass will eventually complete its cycle and return to earth.