8 Remote Works of Art We Insist You Track Down
Here are eight art installations to inspire your next artistic pilgrimage.
Gianfranco Gorgoni/Art Production Fund/Nevada Museum of Art
If you want to look at art, going to a museum is a sure bet. There you’ll find plenty of work from Picasso, Rodin, and Monet, framed by four white walls. But there’s art to be found outside the museum—in deserts, along mountains paths, and nestled into valleys. Artists have long been drawn to desolate landscapes where they can plant artistic easter eggs that are, in many cases, hard to get to and difficult to find. Here are eight installations to inspire your next artistic pilgrimage.
Lance GerberScene with ShyBot Coachella Valley, California
This year, artists converted California's Coachella Valley into an arid gallery for Desert X. The inaugural show features [Instagram-worthy work](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/desertx/) from 16 artists who have built everything from a mirrored home (Doug Aitken's *Mirage*) to an Egyptian pigeon house constructed from adobe (Sherin Guirguis' *One I Call*). The installations span 45 miles of the Sonoran desert, and most are findable on GPS, save for one: Norma Jeane's *Scene with ShyBot*. The Italian artist partnered with the designers at Codame to equip the [small, six-wheeled rover](http://www.thelab.org/projects/2017/2/27/norma-jeane-scene-with-shybot) with sensors that allow it to not only detect but avoid humans. Good luck getting a gram---as soon as the bot senses your presence, it runs the other way.
Gianfranco Gorgoni/Art Production Fund/Nevada Museum of ArtSeven Magic Mountains, Nevada
Drive fifteen minutes west of Las Vegas on Interstate 15 and you’ll stumble upon *Seven Magic Mountains*. Artist Ugo Rodinone stacked locally sourced boulders on top of one another to build the 25-foot day-glo totems. As Rodinone explains it, the installation sits between the artifice of Las Vegas and the natural desert backdrop. The rocks themselves straddle this divide, too. The neon stones can one moment seem to blend with their desert surrounding and look totally alien the next.
GoogleCity, Nevada
Since 1972, artist Michael Heizer has been transforming a parcel of land in Nevada’s remote Garden Valley into a monumental land art installation. *City* was inspired in part by the Native American traditions of mound building. The project consists of five phases, each comprising a series of massive geometrical structures and sculptures built primarily from the desert land and concrete. *City* will remain closed to the public until it is completed at some unknown future date (in 2015, Heizer said it was 98 percent finished). What is currently built is not visible, unless you're trespassing.
Steven MessamPaper Bridge, Lake District, England
Steve Messam built a bridge made from 22,000 [pieces of paper](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=steve+messam+wired+liz&*). For two weeks in 2015, you could find the bright red arch bridge nestled into England’s Lake District, adding an unexpected dash of color to the region’s rolling green hills. To build it, Messam compressed the paper pieces into an arch, removed the wooden brace, and let it stand on its own. The bridge might look precarious, but don't worry---it's stable enough to support the weight of 60 sheep.
Gugo Torelli and Shirin AbediniradBabel Tower, Iran
For a few days in October 2015, artist Shirin Abedinirad installed a mirrored pyramid in the Dasht-e Kavir desert in central Iran. The pyramid, built from glass boxes stacked atop each other, was powered by an arduino, which could sense changes in sunlight and temperature. Each of the boxes would spin independently depending on the light and temperature in the desert. The result was a gleaming sculpture that reflected the bright sun and endless desert landscape. Abedinirad eventually had to remove the piece (he didn’t have permits to keep it there), but he has plans to install it elsewhere soon.
Nigel Treblin/Getty ImagesRoden Crater, Arizona
James Turrell bought the Roden Crater, a deep crater in Arizona’s Painted Desert, back in 1977. Since then, the artist has worked to transform the space into a series of his signature perceptual tricks. The crater is still technically under construction, but by the time Turrell is finished, it’ll include 21 viewing spaces and six tunnels—a half natural/half man-made fun house built to Turrell's specifications.
Dana SherwoodDen, Norway
Mark Dion’s *Den* is set inside a mountain cave along Norway’s National Tourist Route. The piece features a synthetic brown bear lying on top of a pile of human-made trash (think wheels, hats, lightbulbs) that Dion found in thrift stores. When there’s not too much snow, visitors can access the installation by entering the cave and walking down a tunnel where they can spy the sleeping brown bear through a pane of glass.
Chinati Foundation15 Untitled Works In Concrete, Marfa, Texas
Donald Judd installed a series of untitled concrete sculptures in a flat field behind the Chianti Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The sculptures, which are built from concrete slabs 25 centimeters thick, are simple boxes oriented in different directions. Through his dedication to minimalism, Judd is able to make the installation less about the sculptures themselves and more about the context in which they exist.
