Zoe Crosher’s chapter of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, entitled LA-LIKE: Shangri-LA’d, was created by staging a lush landscape in the former Communist Chinese Headquarters in Mandarin Plaza in Chinatown in Los Angeles, CA. Crosher collaborated with florist Hollyflora to create a wall of flora and fauna that embodies Hollyflora’s fantasy of Los Angeles and the promise of the western ideal.
This Expanded Shangri-LA’d project has the potential to be realized anywhere in the world as it is a conceptual assignment, given by the artist to a local florist wherever the wall is commissioned. There is a different and unique result each time, embodying that particular florist’s imaginary of Los Angeles. The entropic installation is documented onsite, tracking the gradually transforming and decaying façade of a landscape, to become both a series of light boxes and, ultimately, a same-sized/life-sized crystalized version of the decayed wall.
The launch of the billboards is presented in conjunction with Crosher’s installation Expanded LA-LIKE: The Actual Shangri-LA’d Disappearing Wall at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert. Various activations and events will take place during the opening weekend celebration, including the unveiling of a version of the flora wall as depicted on Crosher’s billboards made in collaboration with floral artist Briana Burt of Eventscapes along with two performances of Scott Benzel’s Desert Center (Composition I-10, Mvmt IV: Dusk), a sound composition designed to respond to the traffic patterns and harmonics of I-10. More information here
ZOE CROSHER
CHAPTER 9: LA-LIKE: SHANGRI-LA’D
APRIL 2015
Chapter #9: Zoe Crosher
Arizona to San Bernardino, CA
For this iteration, Zoe Crosher will create a series of ten billboards, entitled LA-LIKE: Shangri’LA’d, that depict a gradually transforming and decaying landscape over space and time. As the billboards unfold west from the Arizona-California border through to Palm Springs and Riverside County, the lush green foliage will become more withered and brown, contrasting with the greenery of the suburban landscape and its promise of abundance.
“As the billboards unfold over space and time traveling west along I-10 in the Palm Springs, CA area, the lush green foliage, symbolic of the promise of abundance/fecundity and in stark contrast to the barren desert landscape, becomes increasingly withered and brown. The falsity of the romanticized notion of Manifest Destiny is manifest in her billboards as the promise of riches slowly degrades and fades away, just as the intangible American Dream slips away from those in its pursuit.” – Mara Gladstone, Curator
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CONTACT: Z@ZOECROSHER.COM
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