Claudia O’Steen. Arc of Visibility, 2015; video, binocular/projector stands, Yellowheart, cedar, glass, rocks collected over time from 41°29’40.72”N, 71°8’8.10”W, sandbags containing sand from same coordinates, video projections, stainless steel, glass reflectors, aluminum, mirrored Plexiglas, compass level; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and apexart, New York.

Claudia O’Steen’s video and sculpture, Arc of Invisibility (2015), sit amid a table filled with the curators’ and exhibition designer’s vinyl text—identifying topics of inquiry like dissemination, evidence, and illusion—and objects related to the artists’ projects, like maps, a stereopticon, and more. O’Steen partially bypasses the table’s clutter by projecting her video on the floor while her homespun, wooden surveyor transit sits on top. Transits, typically consisting of a telescope with a crosshair, measure the relational distance and angle of objects for construction, landscaping, and geography. O’Steen’s transit differs from conventional ones by producing two images that are split along a vertical axis, one of which is upside-down. In O’Steen’s video, shot at South Shore Beach, Rhode Island (indicated as 41˚29’40.72″N, 71˚8’8.10″W), she walks toward the Atlantic Ocean, holding her transit. While the artist attempts to hold it level with the horizon line, her wobbly split-screen and partially upside-down imagery of the ocean are disorienting. Fashioned almost like a twin-lens reflex camera (with two openings, mirrors, and an eyepiece on the top), O’Steen’s transit combines the acts of looking outward toward the horizon and downward to the ground, such that her video shows the ocean along with beach pebbles and occasionally her feet in the background. With her quasi-scientific approach and tool, O’Steen’s project embraces futility and disorientation to envision the way we comprehend place.

William Lamson. A Line Describing the Sun, 2010 (video still); 2-channel video; 13:35. Courtesy of the Artist and apexart, New York.

Installed on the wall behind O’Steen’s work, William Lamson’s A Line Describing the Sun (2010) resonates with O’Steen’s use of simple optics to calibrate the landscape. Lamson’s two-channel video shows him with an extended, tricycle-like apparatus fitted with an oversize Fresnel lens and mirror. Lamson’s device reflects and concentrates sunlight to burn the ground, demonstrating that light may also be heat. Following the sun’s east-west passage, Lamson creates an earthwork as he draws a line across a dried lake bed in the Mojave Desert. Additionally, with the project’s day-long duration in a harsh climate, Lamson enacts an endurance piece, evidenced in the welder’s goggles that protect his vision as he scorches the earth. The absence of water in the Mojave Desert renders it almost alien to Earth, the “Blue Planet” whose water is considered the source of life.[1] While Lamson most importantly uses video to document his process, he also uses it to create poetic and formal analogies, like when the rotating wheel of his tricycle suggests the motion of the machine and the rotation of the Earth. Additionally, he juxtaposes imagery on one screen of burning the otherworldly, barren, and cracked earth while a bright circle against a black background travels across the other screen—like the moon traveling across the sky. As Lamson scorches the earth, he creates a tangible and linear relationship with the sun and relates it to distant planets or the moon.

Ivan Puig and Andrés Padilla Domene. Donkey on Mars [Burro en Marte], 2013; digital pigment print; 37.25 x 52.75 in. Courtesy of the Artist and apexart, New York.

Setting Out, 2016; installation view. Courtesy of apexart.

While these three works succinctly complement each other, the exhibition also follows several different trajectories, like the mysteries of a failed boat exploration, human-animal parallels, stargazing, and surveillance. Much of the work intriguingly creates narratives about what and how we see. Throughout the exhibition, the artists’ playfulness and absurd contraptions disrupt the linearity of scientific practice, provoking questions about utility and goals in art and science.

Setting Out is on view at apexart in New York City through March 5, 2016.

[1] The Mojave Desert averages less than five inches of rainfall a year. This dryness combined with the heat results in a remarkably clear sky, with only a few clouds that obstruct or diffuse the sun’s light. The absence of water is also apparent in the dry, cracked lake beds.

William Lamson. Action for the Delaware, 2011. HD video, 14 min 9 sec. Courtesy the artist.

Smithson, Christo and Jeanne Claude executed their work by imposing their aesthetic upon the environment.  Smithson’s Spiral Jetty moved 6650 tons of rubble out into the Great Salt Lake, while Christo and Jeanne Claude wrapped the Australian coastline with one million square feet of fabric.  These grand efforts, intentionally or not, seem to reflect a human desire to bend nature to the creator’s will.  Other celebrated artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long have since taken less invasive approaches, but by rearranging leaves or stacking stones, these artists still exhibit a dominion over the will of nature.  Lamson, however, departs from this tradition in a way that reflects a current, more sensitive attitude towards environmental impact by creating art that leaves behind the smallest traces possible, if no traces at all.

In Action for the Delaware (2011),a 14 minute long, sharply-produced video, we are introduced to a long shot of Lamson seeming to defy physics by quietly standing on the surface of the Delaware River as he drifts along with the current.  This serene illusion is soon broken, as the video cuts to a close up of Lamson struggling to get aboard the apparatus that earlier kept him afloat.  He has trouble standing up in the chaotic flow of the river, and when he does manage to get afloat, he struggles to pump water out of his boots in order to correct his buoyancy.  The video periodically bounces back and forth between these two shots, letting the viewer in on the secret: even when the illusion is complete, the artist is still subject to nature’s temperamental will.  In fact, the artist is only successful in his efforts when the river allows, and this becomes a poignant reminder of our everyday interactions with nature that we can never truly control.

William Lamson. Action for the Delaware, 2011. HD video, 14 min 9 sec. Courtesy the artist.

At Robischon Gallery, a similar piece is shown titled Action for the Paiva (2010).  Here, a long, static shot shows Lamson utilizing the same underwater platform to ever so slowly float on a river eddy.  However, unlike Action for the Delaware, the illusion is never broken as Lamson cedes control of his movements and placidly drifts along the current for 25 minutes.  The fog rolls in, birds chirp in the distance and the viewer is subtly reminded that nature always looms larger than the artist.  In Untitled (Bottle) (2011), Lamson’s video camera follows a bottle that has been attached to a kite and set adrift in the desert amongst windswept sand dunes.  The kite pulls the bottle along the sand creating a line that traces the contours of the dunes while following the pull of the desert wind.  The piece has precedent in Long’s work, where he created lines out of rearranged stone, or even the prehistoric Nazca Lines in the Peruvian desert.  But unlike many of his predecessors, Lamson again defers to nature.  The wind that truly creates the lines is also the force that will shortly destroy them.  Finally, in Untitled (Blanket) (2011) Lamson’s video camera follows alongside a foil camping blanket as it is blown across the desert by the unrelenting wind.  The blanket takes on a strange organic feel as it lightly tumbles across the endlessly flat desert floor.  Again, the power of this video lies in metaphor, as the blanket which normally functions to protect campers from the elements is now subject to the will of the elements as it coasts aimlessly across the desert landscape.

William Lamson. Action for the Paiva, 2010. HD video, 9 min 47 sec. Courtesy the artist.

Rather than leaving a semi-permanent scar on the landscape, Lamson’s performances leave minimal impact on the environments in which they take place.  The only lasting relics are his visually appealing videos.  The new media formats of video and performance coupled with his conscious treatment of his surroundings presents environmental art in a new, contemporary manner.  In this way, Lamson becomes the environmental artist that is more suited for our times than the artists that preceded him.

We continue this week’s coverage with Benjamin Bellas’ review of the experimental projects at SEVEN.

William Lamson. Photo courtesy of the artist.

In the process of trekking from one designated fair to another during Art Basel Miami Beach weekend, one encounters a litany of individuals, vendors, and spaces trying to grab your attention from amongst the morass.  In the Wynwood District situated along the walking path, (for those who hadn’t the patience to wait for the shuttle from Scope to Pulse), was one such space that was the gem of all of Art Basel.

Since 2006, Pierogi Gallery, Hales Gallery and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts have presented a special exhibition during the art fair week in Miami.  This year BravinLee programs, Postmasters, P•P•O•W, and Winkleman galleries have joined the original three in a new 24,000-square-foot space in the Wynwood Art District. Entitled SEVEN, this expanded project looks beyond the art fair model to create an alternative platform for presenting and experiencing contemporary art.   Defined by large installations and collaborative curatorial projects, SEVEN has been conceived to provide an exhibition experience defined by the needs of each artist’s work.  The viewing experience is much more that of a biennial than the one we have grown accustomed to at the traditional art fair.

Amongst the numerous large scale video projections presented within the cavernous exhibition space was William Lamson’s A Line Describing the Sun. An exquisitely documented land art installation/performance whereby Lamson uses a mirror and Fresnel lens, mounted to a wheeled device, to harness the sun’s rays in order to melt the mud of a dry lake bed into glass-like arcing line.  The video, having recently been on exhibit at Pierogi’s Boiler space with a 23-foot scale model of the line created, lacks nothing without it’s sculptural counterpart.

David Herbert, Monarch, 2008. Chicken wire, spray foam, plaster bandages, chrome paint, plywood, hardware, colored paper, steel 8 x 8 x 12 feet. Photo courtesy of the artist.

On the other end of the spectrum, in terms of process and content, was David Herbert’s Monarch.  The work is doubly hilarious in it’s would be life size depiction of The Alien seemingly napping in an over-sized rocking chair while a monarch butterfly lands on its wrist, and in its impressive use of foundation level materials: chicken wire, spray foam, plaster bandages, chrome paint, plywood, hardware, colored paper, steel. Other standout works from a strong field of contenders included Kelly Heaton‘s The Fashionista, and Sam Van Aken‘s, Oh My God.

Asked why they were expanding the effort this year, Pierogi Gallery’s Joe Amrhein replied, “Why not? We are not challenging the ubiquitous tradition of the ‘Art Fair’ but think we can improve upon it, especially in Miami with its unique possibilities. If you feel that most people who visit the fairs really want something that allows for a different, more comprehensive interaction, it shouldn’t surprise you that artists and their dealers feel the same way.”  Now let’s just all hope that the fair organizers feel the same way.