As part of Desert X, a contemporary art exhibition in Palm Springs by 14 established and emerging artists, UCLA art professor Jennifer Bolande provides a cinematic experience for drivers and passengers driving along the Gene Autry Trail.
Bolande’s new work, “Visible Distance,” is mounted on billboards and meant to be experienced from a moving car going either north or south on the Gene Autry Trail.
Drivers and passengers can see images of the very mountains they are heading towards — the San Bernardino mountains to the north and the San Jacinto mountains to the south. The photographs are positioned and scaled to create a continuous horizon line, reconnecting what the rectangle of the billboard had interrupted. Each photograph is unique to its position along the route; for one moment, perfect alignment with the horizon will occur.
Within the desert empire of roadside signs, Bolande chooses to advertise the very thing so often overlooked. Looking up at the billboards, the viewer is drawn back to the landscape itself, depicted as a stuttering kinesthetic of real and artificial horizons.
Transforming the desert landscape of Coachella Valley through site-specific work, Desert X will be exhibited until April 30.
