From Earth Rubbings 1991

Herman de Vries made "From Earth Rubbings" using the earth itself as the medium. Look closely, and you’ll see it is brown, the color of dirt. It has a kind of unassuming beauty. The texture is everything here. It reminds me of that first shocking moment when you see a Rauschenberg dirt painting, or even a Warhol Oxidation painting, and realize, wow, you can do that? The earth has so much variation within its apparent uniformity, you can get lost in it. It’s as though de Vries is saying, "wake up and smell the earth”. The rubbings look almost like an unfurled scroll or a primitive form of writing. At the top, the mark-making seems to suggest a line of trees, with a thick and clotted surface, like the textures of bark and leaf. You begin to realize that art can be a conversation that has to go on forever. Like, where do we even start to try and describe how the earth looks?