Content provided in partnership with

Under the sun: Nico Israel on high desert test sites - On Site - California's experimental art project

ArtForum, Sept, 2003 by Nico Israel

WELCOME TO THE REAL of the Desert: rocks, heat, cacti, empty beer cans, all-terrain vehicles, horizon, fire ants, lizards--and contemporary art.

It's Memorial Day weekend, and we're heading east from Los Angeles on the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway, more prosaically known as Route 10. We pass Diamond Bar, Rancho Cucamonga, and other barely distinguishable towns, about two hours later approaching the giant wind mills of Morongo that mark the passage from the semi-arid desert to the arid extra-dry desert. Our destination is High Desert Test Sites, a project providing alternative space in the Southern California desert for more than thirty artists to make and show experimental work. Organized by artist Andrea Zittel, gallerists John Connelly and Shaun Caley Regen, and collector Andy Stillpass, HDTS, according to its website, undertakes "to challenge traditional conventions of ownership, property and patronage." My friend Cindy Ojeda and I decided to see how this lofty, if quixotic, goal actually looks, as it were, on the ground.

Most Popular Articles in Arts: Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism; Free-standing cardboard sculpture; What makes a successful business person? Business people who are tops in ...; Take advantage of local advertising: TV, newspaper or magazines? If your ...; Tino Sehgal at the ICA; More »

On the Morongo Indian Reservation, which straddles Route 10, there's an enormous mall of designer outlet stores, a casino, and a huge, photogenic dinosaur made of concrete that was featured in the film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. These landmarks demarcate a significant geological and cultural cleavage: Toward the right is Route 111 and the dubious glamour of Palm Springs; toward the left, a half hour away, is the upper or "high" desert of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, location of U2's epiphanies, Gram Parsons's fatal overdose and surreptitious cremation, and the country's largest Marine Corps training facility, the Air-Ground Combat Center.

Taking the left fork on our art-viewing Big Adventure, we eventually notice a forlorn temporary carnival plunked down in a vacant lot, its Ferris wheel rotating languidly with a few glum kids in its seats. We've arrived in the town of Yucca Valley, location of the first of seven "test sites" spread out over sixty miles. Stopping for a moment in a nearby Sears parking lot to check our directions, we see a vintagecar show attracting a smattering of admirers to its cherry '63 Corvair, '65 Mustang, and '69 GTO convertible occupying a row of parking spaces. A '66 El Camino rumbles up, with red flames painted on its side, giant steer horns fastened on its hood, and hide covering its overhead-cam engine. It looks like a mobile barbecue.

Site One, HDTS's Welcome Center of sorts, is only a couple of blocks away. Here, on the walls of a small storefront, are drawings and paintings by young local artists in the text-heavy, punk-album style of early Raymond Pettibon. "Hey," says Dave Hopkins, a twenty-one-year-old Yuccan with shaved head, nose ring, and two arms full of tattoos. He shakes our hands in greeting, gives us a map to the sites, and sells us the HDTS catalogue while his friend stands nearby, looking at us and laughing mirthlessly but uncontrollably in the staccato rhythm of a machine gun. It's 11 AM and the friend reeks of gin. Drawing on my own fond Southern California high school recollections, I think I recognize the teeth-gnashing jitters of a meth head.

Leaving Site One rather hastily, we drive out past Shear Illusions--the penchant for puns for hairsalon names is apparently a nationwide phenomenon--and, following the HDTS map, turn left at Old Woman Springs Road and head north toward Victorville. Snowcapped mountains glimmer in the distance, and in the foreground, a row of trailers squat in the sun. About fifteen minutes later we arrive at sandy and bumpy Gamma Gulch Road, location of Site Two. We park, get out of the car, and, it being well over 100 blazing degrees, retrieve our ridiculously wide-brimmed sun hats from the trunk.

Wandering aimlessly--there are no signs or "wall" texts, but we are equipped with our catalogues--we soon come across a nine-foot-high wooden X amid the Joshua trees. The sculptural installation, by Wade Guyton, seems to offer architectural support for the trees, marking the spot of its own algebraic indeterminacy amid the rocks, dormant shrubs, and other forms of rump nature that surround it. Nearby is a lovely little purple concrete octopus, by Kate Costello, which looks as though it has been washed a hundred miles ashore onto the parched desert floor, where it now sits perkily. Fifty yards up a dirt path is Tao Urban's oasis-like Water Kiosk (Tap Water Pavilion), 2003, a roofed structure with four large containers of water from different California rivers, the premise of which, according to the catalogue, is "to create a place for people to sit in the shade, drink a little water and take in the landscape." These instructions are pleasant to follow, and probably necessary: The heat is starting to make me dizzy.

Driving back toward Yucca in our mercifully airconditioned car, we pass Pioneertown, which had been built in 1946 as a movie set for westerns, featuring a "Mane Street," a covered wagon, an OK Corral, and a swing-doored saloon. I half expect somebody to be tossed out of the touristy watering hole at any moment for creating a ruckus. One of the original investors in the town was Roy Rogers, who also built the nearby bowling alley. I discover later that Ed Ruscha has a house out here, which somehow seems right: Pioneertown, like Ruscha's work, conveys a meaningful vacancy.

Under the sun: Nico Israel on high desert test sites - On Site - California's experimental art project

ArtForum, Sept, 2003 by Nico Israel

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts