Combining science, art and technology, the Autry Museum of the American West unveils Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West—opening up a unique dialogue about remote, obscure or completely hidden sites throughout the American West. Featured are 139 works including archival documents, artifacts and visual technologies, works on paper, paintings, photography and video by both contemporary and historic artists.
John Divola, Blue with Exceptions 16576 (12_16_2020) from the series George Air Force Base, 2020, pigment print, medium-format digital image. Courtesy of the artist, © John Divola.The exhibition is organized into three sections: Site Unseen, Survey to Surveillance and Remote Control. “It follows a general chronological path, beginning with the gold rush and the desire to see and possess Western resources, especially the precious metals buried underground,” says Amy Scott, the Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry.
Rachelle Reichert, Moodswings, 2021, pigment prints on aluminum. Courtesy of the artist, © Rachelle Reichert.
Scott explains that the exhibition evolves to explore other hidden forces at work within the landscape, including geology and archeology in the 19th century and the widescale patterns of destruction wrought by the Dust Bowl in the early 20th century. “The second half of the show focuses on the rise of the military industrial complex that is buried across the desert Southwest, and the ways in which artists have envisioned and revealed the activity, from weapons development and testing to the toxic fallout that results,” says Scott. “We end up in the 21st century with contemporary artists who explore systems of surveillance and other operations that collect massive amounts of information on us in the name of national security.”
Richard Misrach, Entrance, Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository (under construction), Nevada, 1994, pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. © Richard Misrach.
One of the highlights from the exhibition is the medium-format digital print Blue with Exceptions 16576 (12_16_2020), created by John Divola in 2020. “This is a beautiful and cryptic work that can be read on many different levels…,” Scott remarks. On the one hand, it’s a piece of technical photographic virtuosity—his use of the blue chromatic flash highlights the surface details of the wall…Then there is the way he frames it, spray painting a frame around the hole in the wall…so there are images within the image. Then we have to consider what the place is and why it’s so damaged; the photo was taken at George Airforce Base, which is a defunct, toxic relic of the Cold War, located outside of Victorville, California. It was decommissioned after toxic levels of contaminants were found in the groundwater and water supply. [Neglect is] highlighted by Divola’s artistic choices.”
Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882), Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, N.M. in a Niche 50 Feet Above Present Cañon Bed, 1873, Albumen print. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The iconic image Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, N.M. in a Niche 50 Feet Above Present Cañon Bed, photographed by Timothy O’Sullivan in 1873, is used in the exhibition to expose both the geological age of the Western landscape alongside its human history. “To its 19th-century audience, this image spoke to the American West as a place of ancient origin, equivalent to the classical temples of Greece and Rome,” says Scott. “It also helped paint a picture of Indigenous peoples as vanished, a belief that was critical to the American empire and helped underwrite westward expansion.”
Out of Site will surely leave you with the feeling that the Western landscape is so much more than what meets the eye. Explore this rare exhibition opening May 18 and closing in early January of next year. —
Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West
May 18, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025
Autry Museum of the American West
4700 Western Heritage Way Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 667-2000, www.theautry.org
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