High Desert Test Sites: GOOGLY EYES for GIANT ROCK 2013
October 12 - October 19
Fabricated by the ingenious folks at Studio Sereno. Click: HERE for more info on their other projects
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
For over a decade, High Desert Test Sites has supported experimental art that engages with the local environment and community. HDTS generates physical and conceptual spaces for art exploring the intersections between contemporary art and life at large. Scattered along a stretch of intimate yet diverse desert communities that include Joshua Tree, Pioneertown, Wonder Valley, Yucca Valley, and 29 Palms, our sites provide a place for both temporary and long-term experimental projects. My project for HDTS was to mount a large scale public sculpture of oversized googly eyes installed adjacent to Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert, Landers, California. This site specific piece engaged directly with the massive scale of Giant Rock and also its vast majestic surroundings. The eyes, elevated atop metal rods met the landscape's gaze and were also set in motion with any amount of breeze. They also were equipped for night vision, glowing as soon as dusk became night; the powerful effect of these illuminated peepers was resonant.
Traditionally, googly eyes are used in craft projects to stand in for eyeballs. Their use often personifies objects for a humorous effect. I am very interested in the way humor can function as one of our coping mechanisms when facing the transitory nature of physical existence, and grasping the minute scale of ourselves relative to the vastness of nature and mankind’s blip in its larger timeline.
After viewing Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass at LACMA, I returned with hand-held googly eyes and took photos of the rock while holding them in the foreground; the exercise served to make the rock much less grandly intimidating in my mind. When I encountered Giant Rock, which is 10 times the size of Heizer's, in my mind it called for a much larger set of eyes to produce the same result and shift of perspective. Animating Giant Rock with googly eyes further escalates the humor of its history, since it still serves as a site for UFO enthusiasts to gather. It was also leased for decades by the eccentric George Van Tassel, a purported UFO contactee and organizer of such conventions who built the structure near Giant Rock called the Integraton based on information he received from Aliens.
My installation of Googly Eyes for Giant Rock underscored the inherent tourism-friendly photogenic attractiveness of its awe-inspiring landscape. Sculptural "markers" were installed in several places leading toward the piece to designate and suggest particularly scenic vantage points where the visitor is urged to photograph the Googly Eyes in front of Giant Rock. As scale can be easily transformed within a photograph by what is shown in the foreground and/or background within a given frame, Giant Rock will appear smaller in an image when the googly eyes are positioned in front of it. This additional aspect of the work offers the chance to photograph and therefore imagine and obtain Giant Rock as one's very own pet rock.
PROJECT MOCK-UPS
GOOGLEY EYES INSTALLED AT HDTS
Photos by Asuka Hisa
Photos by Rubin Diaz
