Desert X Marks the Art Spot – by Genie Davis
Through May 11th, don’t miss the 5th iteration of Desert X, in of course, the desert – Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and Desert Hot Springs are among the locations this year. This is one of the strongest and most successful editions of the exhibition, whose purpose is to create and present international contemporar art that fits the desert sites in which its located. We saw each of the works over a leisurely two day visit.
Let’s start where we did, with Agnes Denes jubilant, flower filled work at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage. The Living Pyramid is both an artwork and an environmental intervention, per Desert X – under any category, it’s a deeply touching piece that reveals the fragility and promise of life in the desert.
Completely different and located in the raw desert piece is Muhannad Shono’s viscerally haunting What Remains. The fabric works evoke windswept sails on long dried seas.
Sarah Meyohas’ Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams is a pristine vision that unfolds like a bright white ribbon. Her immersive installation creates significant word patterns using “caustics,” light patterns formed by the refraction or reflection of light through curved surfaces. What a dynamite piece.
Ronald Rael’s Adobe Oasis in Palm Desert is just that, a maze that also serves as a place of rest and succor from the sun.
Out on Highway 111, off Tramway Road, in Palm Springs, Kapwani Kiwanga’s Plotting Rest is beautifully matched in setting and offers different encompassing views of art and scenery from every angle.
Sanford Biggers’ work sparkles as it brings the sky, or at least its clouds, closer to earth. Beautiful from all angles, Unsui (Mirror) shines.
Possibly my favorite in a field of favorites this year (or a desert’s worth, perhaps) is Kimsooja’s To Breathe, a dancing, light-filled walk through prism that changes with the direction of the sun. We visited at noon, when the piece gave off rainbows.
While G.H.O.S.T Ride moves about, when we saw it, the Mad-Max-like work by Cannupa Hanska Luger was just up the hill from Kimsooja’s piece. Delightful and imaginative with an audio component, the location was a tough climb on a hot day, let’s hope it’s easier to view in these warmer final weekends.
Alison Saar brings heart and soul to a terrific and interactive Soul Station in Desert Hot Springs. From a fully realized gas station interior, to signs with mantras for peaceful living, and a gas pump with a seashell silver handle that offers beautiful poetic messages to listeners, this art is fully alive.
Also in Desert Hot Springs, Jose Davila offers monoliths reminscent of Stone Henge – if Stone Henge was made today and spoke to the movement of immigration as does The act of being together.
