Pop Land Art Vibrations

Across a field of pure desert expanse, a cosmic unity of elements collide to create Ugo Rondinone’s Pop Land Art work of another dimension. An otherworldly assemblage of time, place and experience, Seven Magic Mountains rise symbolic of the power in art to evoke a heightened sense of endless, boundless, oceanic awareness. Positioned on the fringe of glittering excess, due south of the Las Vegas strip, seven magnificent totems composed of locally-sourced limestone in colors that burst into psychedelia await. The pieces teeter a tight rope of harsh contrasts amplifying the depth of interactions between humans and nature and extending experiential art into the realm of phenomena. An unprecedented piece of contemporary land art contextualized across the historical significance of Nevada’s land art legacy, Seven Magic Mountains encapsulates the mental trinity of references to the natural world, romanticism and existentialism that have underpinned Rondinone’s work throughout time.  The surreal rock formations, reminiscent of naturally occurring hoodoos, stack mystical layers of meaning eliciting individual ideas to mark ones passage through. A different sense of reality reawakened me to the heart of my intention, to create a meaningful world of fantasy and escapism, a transportive space of rich inner and outer discovery, a post-modern visual language to provoke new ways of thinking. I return to Robert Venturi’s and Denise Scott Brown’s seminal book published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas a pivotal piece which began to break down the accepted understanding of exclusivity in architecture and celebrate its place in the vibrancy of popular culture, I sense a liberating new wave.