Modern Desert Markings: An Homage to Las Vegas Area Land Art
March 14–July 8, 2023
Opening reception: Friday March 24, 5–8pm
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Curated by Katie Hoffman and Hikmet Sidney Loe
The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art and Nevadans for Cultural Preservation are pleased to present Modern Desert Markings: An Homage to Las Vegas Area Land Art, an exhibition that uses contemporary perspectives to critique five historic works of Land Art located in the deserts of Southern Nevada. Curators Katie Hoffman and Hikmet Sidney Loe have selected ten artists from around the United States to produce new work inspired by foundational pieces of Land Art created by Walter De Maria (1935–2013), Michael Heizer (1944–), and Jean Tinguely (1925–1991). Working in drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and more, the ten artists bring fresh and critical eyes to these celebrated works from the 1960s and ‘70s, using a diversity of approaches to address related issues such as land ownership, desert ecology, and tourism. Featuring Mark Brest von Kempen, Emily Budd, Adriana Chavez, Marisa J. Futernick, Michael Dax Iacovone, nicholas b jacobsen, Paula Jacoby-Garrett, Keeva Lough, Rachelle Reichert, and Jen Urso.
In Mirage, Marisa J. Futernick considers the complex sociopolitical histories of the Nevada desert and the multitudes contained within these supposedly “empty” lands. The video uses the slideshow format, combining a voiceover narration with digital and analog photographs and slides shot on location by the artist.
Taking a poetic approach, Futernick’s narrative incorporates both fictional and factual elements, creating a more expansive form of storytelling. Mirage tries to figure out what makes up this place, from atomic testing to gaming, mining to the building of Hoover Dam. Construction, destruction, the economics of natural resources and land usage, the visualization of the current water crisis—what can be seen and what is hidden from view?
In the context of these bigger environmental explorations and exploitations, Futernick alludes to the historic land art works featured in Modern Desert Markings, responding to their inherent gendering—their grandiosity, expressions of power and imposition on the land—while also considering broader ideas of masculinity in the mythology of the American West.