The simplicity of Smith s concept and beauty of the site posed direct challenges to the perfect implementation of the artwork, said SOM. Of particular importance was the 42-degree sloped site and the necessity of the 30-foot-long mirrored plane to be a perfectly level extruded form, free from internal structural elements.
An LED screen displays shifting colours
During the day, the mirrored surface reflects the light and scenery. As night falls, the LED display shows a shifting array of light and colour like an artificial sky. At sunset, the reflection of the glowing sky and onshore moving clouds merges with floating, shifting gradients of light across the surface of the work, said Phillip K Smith III.
(Lance Gerber)
As an artistic form, the machine-geometry of a classic Minimalist cube has long signaled the heavy industrialization of the modern world which ravaged Africa, contributing to the water crises that today plague Ghana. Securing the resource for survival requires relentless daily labor.
That’s what all those yellow water containers are for. Bringing the local desert into the endurance narrative, Attukwei Clottey spread a puddle-shaped sheet on the ground that links the two cubes.
Set in another lovely garden, Amer’s “Women’s Qualities” is partly tongue-in-cheek, supposedly identifying essential human attributes according to gender. And partly it’s a savvy dismantling of cultural stereotypes often ascribed to nature.
Katie Ryan s Ghost Palm (2019) in the second edition of the Desert X biennial Lance Gerber
As California hits a bleak coronavirus milestone this month, with nearly 10% of the population infected, organisers of Desert X in the Coachella Valley have announced that the forthcoming edition of the outdoor sculpture exhibition will be postponed until lockdown restrictions have been lifted in the state.
The third edition of the exhibition, which has become known as an arbiter of the “festival art” movement in the California and Nevada desert, was scheduled to open on 6 February (until 11 April) and offer both digital and in-person experiences throughout the valley.