Catalogue /

Deserted

A journey blending studies of the American deserts and their hidden stories.

Surreal, alluring and unattainable are just a few of the words that describe the world's deserts in all their charm and complexity. With his characteristic play on reality, Harris has depicted scenes that at first sight appear to be windows into the truly remarkable ecosystems, wildlife and natural phenomena within deserts. By exploring the artwork more closely, the viewer is drawn into Harris's romanticised surrealness, interrogating what lies below the seemingly pictorial study of these fascinating landscapes.

Interaction is central to this artwork, and with the viewer's touch or movement the elements within each landscape respond: from the smallest of creatures to the largest of weather systems. Deserted is composed of four distinct scenes portraying three very different deserts in North America: White Sands New Mexico, Joshua Tree National Park and Monument Valley. In the fourth scene Harris plays upon the NASA lunar-landing conspiracy theories, presenting a landscape that could be either on earth or on the moon.

"The artworks I create are very much a look and a response and sometimes a very romanticised, if not idealised, depiction of the experience I had. If you take, for example, the Deserted artwork, I have these very fond memories of when I was in the United States studying and travelling. For a long time I’d been road tripping around with my camera, documenting the things I’d found. I’ve always been drawn to the beauty of the environment and nature but the memories I have, or the memories I’ve formed from these encounters, tend to become distorted or surreal, sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately. There’s this kind of cross-pollination between what is real and the things I’ve been looking at in popular culture. Maybe it’s films that end up being associated with the places I’ve visited and it’s the storytelling’s fault." - Dominic Harris

Extract from interview with Dominic Harris by Simon Quintero.

Harris’s works forge an unlikely bridge between the real and the digital. Harris is, admittedly, a traditionalist.  His embrace of the digital is not one of subversion, rather, of a love for the marvels of the screen format, and above all, technology. Harris’s “computer art” forbearers include the Swiss artist, Jean Tinguely, one of the first artists to employ robotic machines to create drawings with his Métamatic series (1955–59).

Extract from essay by Joachim Pissarro


Year:
2017

Format:
An interactive screen-based artwork comprising 4 unique scenes.Available as scenes switching on a single screen, or across multiple screens.

Edition:
Edition of 8 + 2 Artist Proofs + 2 Museum Proofs, per canvas size

Materials:
Code, electronics, computer, 4K touch display, 3D sensor, metal


Dimensions in MM:
65 inch version with visible sensor above:
860 (W) x 1595 (H) x 203 (D) mm

86 inch version with visible sensor above:
1170 (W) x 2110 (H) x 17.3 (D) mm

Dimensions in INCHES:
65 inch version with visible sensor above:
33.8 (W) x 62.8 (H) x 8 (D) inches

86 inch version with visible sensor above:
46.1 (W) x 83.1 (H) x 6.9 (D) inches

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