As I was on my way to California I happened to look south as I passed near the Jean Dry Lake bed and could not believe what I was seeing.
My first impression was that the McCulloch Company had purchased Stonehenge, moved it to the desert near Las Vegas, and then painted the stones with bright florescent paint.
However, upon closer examination, I found a sign explaining that this was an "artwork of thresholds and crossings, of balanced marvels and excessive colors, of casting and gathering and the contrary air between the desert an the city lights."
The artwork is entitled Seven Magic Mountains and was funded by the Nevada Museum of Art and the Art Production Fund as a "large-scale, site-specific public artwork by artist Ugo Rondinone." The artwork is one of the largest land-based art installations constructed in the United States in over forty years and will be on public display through May 2018.
The sign goes on to state: "Mediating between geological formations and abstract compositions, Rondinone's Seven Magic Mountains of locally-sourced limestone boulders stacked vertically in groups ranging between three and six. Each stone boasts a different fluorescent color, each individual totem stands between thirty and thirty-five feet high. The artwork extends Rondinone's long-running interest in natural phenomena and their reformulation in art. Inspired by naturally occurring Hoodoos and balancing rock formations, the stacks also evoke the art of meditative rock balancing. The works appear poised between monumentality and collapse - seeming to defy gravity in their teetering formations, but equally to depend on it."
Additional information on Seven Magic Mountains is available at www.sevenmagicmountains.com or 702.381.5182 for an audio tour.
No comments:
Post a Comment