Gary Simmons

(USA, 1964)

Process

<p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p> <p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p> <p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p> <p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p> <p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p> <p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (process).</p>

Proposal

<p>Gary Simmons, <em>Desert Blizzard,</em> INSITE97 (proposal).</p>

Based on his series Erasure Drawings, Gary Simmons created his INSITE97 project Desert Blizzard/Tormenta del desierto, a film documenting snowflake shapes drawn in the sky by a pilot/skywriter. The film was projected onto a fabricated train departures sign in the Santa Fe Depot baggage room in downtown San Diego. The site was chosen for its reference to romance and loss, and travel through physical and mental space. Simmons was interested in the site-specificity of the sky drawings as well as the ghostly, ephemeral quality of the images that placed them in a liminal space between representation and abstraction. Viewers had to remember what the original images looked like before the smoke dissipated, transforming Simmons’s public art piece into a private one, based on each individual’s memory.

Curators: Jessica Bradley, Olivier Debroise, Ivo Mesquita, and Sally Yard
Venue: Santa Fe Depot, San Diego

Gary Simmons, Desert Blizzard, INSITE97 (film).