One of the greatest gifts postmodernism ever gave to perception was the idea that art surrounds you every day and everywhere you go. Surprising that it hasn't been showcased in such a colossal way until now: “Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974” is the first large-scale exhibition addressing the peculiarly Herculean artistic discipline of land art. Begun in the 1960s as a desire to work with new artistic media, land art took art out of both museums and frames and put it deep in the heart of nature.  Think Robert Smithson's 1970 land art ground-breaker Spiral Jetty, a muddy salted configuration of earth on shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah that appears and disappears with the rising of the lake's water levels; Andy Goldsworthy's multicolored marriages of earth and vegetation; or G.X. Jupitter-Larsen's Vacant Lots, the 1981 statement that declared all vacant lots in every city as ready-made monuments to entropy. It's an exhibition that is reverent in its exhaustive presentation of more than 80 land art projects from around the world, putting media from television to dirt into context as it unveils one of art's last great frontiers: the out-there, brought in here. Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 N. Central Ave., dwntwn.; Sun., May 27; runs Thurs.-Mon., thru Sept. 3; $12. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

Mondays, Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: May 26. Continues through Sept. 3, 2012

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