Rockpool
An 8-inch-tall, 60-foot-long salt-filled sculpture intricately curved from steel takes its
h o r i z o n t a l form from satellite images of the 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This abstracted shape is s t r e t c h e d across the expansive California desert where sparkling salt crusts left by an ancient extinct ocean are extracted en masse, including for the fracking industry.
HDTS 2022
Curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of Whitechapel Gallery, London
9 new site-specific works in Pioneertown, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Wonder Valley. Artists include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Alice Channer, Gerald Clarke, Erkan Ozgen, Jack Pierson, Dana Sherwood, Kate Lee Short, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Rachel Whiteread
April 9 — May 29, 2022
HDTS 2022 emerges from a heavy felt shift in both culture-at-large and our local desert communities. Its title The Searchers shines light on the “regenerative ruin,” a concept that follows 21st century human intervention in our desert region. As a historically nomadic environment, the desert has played host to waves of different existences—transitory settlements, sanctuaries, and living experiments. This particular desert, at the bottom of the dense Mojave, occupies a fringe space between the western apexes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas where these experiments flourish. Its uniqueness lies in the many ungoverned moments, layered visions, and transposed uses of space that comprise a landscape full of attempted solutions to the basic question of “How to live?”
HDTS 2022 also included ephemeral programs at our community partner sites including the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley and The Palms in Wonder Valley. Documentation of these programs can be found here.
