christof zwiener

Land Art, / Småland # 2 (arrows); 2019

12 arrow signs, each 1m long

Location: Kullbaken, Västervik, Kalmar County

About 16,000 years ago, the first ice retreated in the southernmost part of Sweden, this was the beginning of the end of

the Vistula Ice Age.

The enormous masses of glaciers, which pushed over the land mass for millennia, cutmountains and rocks and formed 

the entire country to what we know today. Also the small mountain Kullbaken in Västervik (on which we are) was visibly 

shaped by the process. With the disappearance of the glaciers, stones and rocks appeared clean, smooth and untouched. 

For millennia, environmental processes and vegetation have covered the surfaces with a patina and show themselves 

as we know them today. With the workLand Art, / Småland # 2 (arrows) in 2019, the German artist Christof Zwiener

reacts to these natural transformation processes and shows us 12 arrows, one meter long, whose surface areas date back

to about 14,000 years ago appear. With a high-pressure cleaner, he washed away the impurities, mosses and lichens 

and became visible in these sharply demarcated areas, the bare surface of the stones and rocks. 

Zwiener deliberately uses the dynamic symbol of the arrow, which is supposed to represent a possible direction of

thrust of the kilometer thick ice sheet at this location. Furthermore, the artist uses the symbol as a kind of time 

arrow representing the idea of a clear and directed connection between past and future. 

Christof Zwiener is aware that his work of art is undergoing a process of disappearance and will no longer be visible in a few years.