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Richard Misrach at Robert Mann - New York
Art in America, Nov, 2002 by Phyllis Tuchman
Stark images of sky, sand and water fill the large 4-by-5-foot prints that constitute "Desert Canto XXIV," the latest installment in Richard Misrach's series of unexpected views of the American West, begun in 1979. Dominated by tones of blue and tan as water reflects sky and sand, these photographs, taken at Battleground Point in northern Nevada, convey the beauty often found in desolate locations.
Upon first encounter, the combination of the pictures' size and the sleekly shaped, imposing landmasses depicted in them underscores the cinematic quality of the work. But instead of imagining Lawrence of Arabia charging over the dune, I thought the looming mound of sand might levitate as if it were a spaceship. There is a reductive, Minimalist character to this work as well. More than anything else, I came to feel as if I were looking at photographs of Earthworks, ca. 1972.
Unlike Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, however, this structure was realized by the forces of nature. Roughly every decade, winter storms fill the Carson and Humboldt rivers so that they rise and flood the Carson Sink, home to Battleground Point. During the 1980s, hundreds of graves, some containing bodies that archeologists believe are 3,000 years old, were discovered as the water receded. This is the sort of story involving time, nature and civilization that served as the subtext to earlier sections of the "Desert Cantos." In this instance, Misrach took his pictures in 1998 following another period of torrential rains.
Photographers like Misrach who use large-format cameras--in this case, an 8-by-10-inch Deardorff--have the ability to capture all sorts of details, which often allows their pictures to convey a "you are there" quality. Yet, the mounds of sand stretching across many of these prints are as smooth and bare as a Minimalist object and practically devoid of incident. Later on, in other examples of this series, when you start to notice details in the water or the road leading to the site or marks in the sand or clouds in the sky, you don't doubt these are photographs taken in real time and space. It's this oscillation between the actual and the abstract, between reading the photographs as landscapes and as depictions of sculptural surrogates, that helps to make the experience of looking at "Desert Canto XXIV" so magical.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
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