WILL IT RETURN?

There are very few contemporary artworks that have returned after their physical disappearance. Among these legendary works, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), in the Great Salt Lake of Utah, is certainly the most famous, and remains shrouded in mystery. A spiral of stones and mud that was covered by water for decades, it is a monument of both utopia and dystopia, a testimony to the triumph of humans over nature and our capitulation to entropy. Half a century later, and across the Atlantic, Huang Yong Ping’s Serpent d’Océan (2012) resurrects the mystery of the return, while at the same time launching a new legend about the unstoppable power of entropy. In this case, the legend refers to both the natural world and human society. More precisely, this incarnation represents how entropic metamorphosis mingles with and transforms nature—including animals and humans—as civilization carries the planet into the Anthropocene era, leaving us speculating on what “post-human” means and what our future will bring.

is an immense skeleton of a serpent, cast in aluminum and