Gates marking an imagined territory, portals to a journey on which we reconsider our relationship to the land and to each other.
Allison Wiese erects entry gates to a landscape of imagination, portals to a journey that realigns our relationship to the land and to each other.
Standing on opposite ends of town, these sculptures reference the ubiquitous ranch gates seen throughout the west that name and claim land. Here, though, the land is marked with enigmatic phrases referencing well-worn screenwriting tropes.
Artifact of Attraction evokes narratives of pursuit, desire, conquest, and ultimately, loss, with an arc of text framing a dramatically mountainous desert landscape. On the other side of town, Un Diálogo, Dos Conversaciones marks a landscape with the sitcom staple that has two characters discussing something together, but talking about two totally different things.
“No desert is a tabula rasa,” states Wiese, “and the portion of the Sonoran Desert that Borrego Springs occupies has a rich natural and human history that predates the arrival of the park’s namesake explorer by thousands of years, making it especially ripe for a set of dramatic competing visions and realities.”
