Leaning Into The Wind

Leaning Into the Wind

Back in 2001, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer introduced moviegoers to Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy with his breathtaking documentary Rivers and Tides. Almost two decades later, he catches up with Goldsworthy in Leaning Into the Wind, and finds the softspoken sculptor still making sublime works of art out of whatever nature throws at him.

On his property in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, for instance, he constructs what look like spray-painted designs on fallen trees. But on closer inspection they turn out to be bright yellow leaves harvested from nearby bushes. Simpler but just as arresting are the impressions Goldsworthy creates by just lying on the ground in the rain; the resulting dry man-shapes make it look as though someone has just fallen from the sky.

Goldsworthy is as much philosopher as artist, and speaks movingly to the camera about the role of time in art, and of the human presence implicit in built structures, whether it be a carefully constructed wall that clearly has years of maintenance in its bones, or the millennium-old rock graves he visits in Morecambe, England, the living rock literally infused with the molecules of its long-vanished occupants.

He is intrigued with the ways in which we leave parts of ourselves behind, whether in the things we make or the memories we make. Nothing is touched without being changed. Though sometimes he finds such ideas overwhelming, and admits that he enjoys grey, overcast days: “It’s like time just stopped for a little while. And it’s a relief.” ★★★★