Gardens of Stone and Mirage
As Sunshine Turns To Stone, coal print, exhibition view, 2024
Gardens of Stone and Mirage
Archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle copperplate printing board, Black aluminium frame, Black passepartout, Artglass AR 70 2mm
31,2 cm x 37,4 cm (framed)
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
The first of the three distinct scenes is set in a landscape that appears quintessentially “original” Los Angeles, yet it is in fact situated within the Harry Carey Ranch complex, one of the foundational sites of the film industry, a place dedicated from its inception to the fabrication of new realities. Overlaying this scene is a rare image of workers planting palm trees along Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, capturing one of the few moments when these palms stood not upright but in a formative posture.
The second scene presents a solitary palm tree standing at a crossroads before the Memorial Coliseum, the oldest (known) palm in Los Angeles, a Washingtonia filifera, the city’s sole native palm species, now diminished to a sparse presence. Once at the city’s suburban edges, this tree was uprooted, transplanted first to a backyard, and in 1889 ceremoniously relocated to a prominent place before the entrance of the Arcade Depot, the Southern Pacific Railroad station, where it greeted visitors. The crossroads themselves, in the image overrun by an image of the Topanga Hills, link the physical site with a mythical crossroads between pre-palm landscapes and the palm-induced semi-tropical desires.
The third image presents the 1932 interior of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, in the faded pigments of a postcard. The stadium’s grandstands appear to dissolve into the same grass-covered slopes that form the hills of Topanga State Park. On the arena floor stand five groupings of palms, arranged in accordance with the elliptical curve of the track.
Across all three images, the scenes are linked by an overlay of fire, flames from funeral pyres and wildfires alike, drawn from a century of burning in the Los Angeles Basin.