Zoe Crosher

Feb 1, 08:02 am

Publication of Wanderlust: ACTIONS, TRACES, JOURNEYS 1967-2017 Catalogue ~ Essay by Melanie Flood

Publication of Wanderlust: ACTIONS, TRACES, JOURNEYS 1967-2017 Catalogue by MIT Press ~Hardcover | $34.95 Trade | £27.95 | 256 pp. | 9 × 11.75 in | 125 color illus., 65 b&w illus. | September 2017 | ISBN: 9780262037051

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Zoe Crosher Essay by Melanie Flood

Los Angeles-based artist Zoe Crosher challenges the notion of a camera as a tool for truth-telling and questions the archaic idea of a photograph as evidence to reality. Through appropriation, sculpture, and photography, Crosher’s practice is inspired by the construction of personal and cultural memory and its relationship to misremembering. Fusing fact with fantasy, Transgressing the Pacific investigates mysterious narratives of fictional deaths as portrayed in Hollywood Films, alongside real-life disappearances. The portfolio of seven large-scale, square-format photographs invokes an eerie sense of nostalgia through depictions of desolate beaches, ominous pier sunsets, and jagged coves, while descriptive titles act as clues.

In Where Natalie Wood Disappeared off Catalina Island (2008), the camera’s harsh flash illuminates the glistening pebbles of a nighttime beach and shallow sea floor, tempting the viewer to examine the scene. Conflicting reports state that actress Natalie Wood accidentally fell off her boat and drowned as the weight of her wet, red coat pulled her under, while an autopsy detailed evidence of foul play. The inconsistent information within reports makes it impossible to photograph with exacts; Crosher chooses which fact to reveal, photographing approximate locations using the precise time of the subject’s vanishing. Crosher’s image confront beliefs of photographic truth while playing into the inherent fiction of recorded history. The sun of a late afternoon tide reflects into the camera lens in Where Michael Douglas Jumped at Venice Pier (20100. In the film Falling Down, Douglas’s character plummets to his death off the Venice Pier after he is shot. The safety railing is clearly rigged to break, signaling that it was a set-up. Crosher’s seascapes epic the vastness of the unknown – tragic crimes without resolution.

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Wanderlust highlights artists as voyagers who leave their studios to make art. This book (and the exhibition it accompanies) is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s need to roam and the work that emerges from this need. Wanderlust presents the work of under-recognized yet pioneering artists alongside their well-known counterparts, and represents works that vary in process, with some artists working as solitary figures implanting themselves physically on the landscape while others perform and create movements in a collaborative manner or in public.

Each of these works recognizes the walk and the journey as much more than just a basic human act. Rebecca Solnit observes that walking replicates thinking, adding “the motions of the mind cannot be traced, but those of the feet can.” These works trace the motions of wandering artists’ focused minds.

Artists include
Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Nevin Aladag, Francis Alÿs, Janine Antoni, John Baldessari, Kim Beck, Roberley Bell, Blue Republic, Sophie Calle, Rosemarie Castoro, Cardiff/Miller, Zoe Crosher, Fallen Fruit, Mona Hatoum, Nancy Holt, Kenneth Josephson, William Lamson, Richard Long, Marie Lorenz, Mary Mattingly, Anthony McCall, Ana Mendieta, Teresa Murak, Wangechi Mutu, Efrat Natan, Gabriel Orozco, Carmen Papalia, John Pfahl, Pope.L, Teri Rueb, Michael X. Ryan, Todd Shalom, Mary Ellen Strom, and Guido van der Werve.

Contributors
Rachel Adams, Lucy Ainsworth, Andrew Barron, Pamela Campanaro, Andy Campbell, Hannah Cattarin, Ian Cofre, Jamie DiSarno, Katherine Finerty, Joshua Fischer, Natalie Fleming, Melanie Flood, Jason Foumberg, Allison Glenn, Kate Green, Ross Stanton Jordan, Anna Kaplan, Jamilee Lacy, Jennie Lamensdorf, Toby Lawrence, Jane McFadden, Lynnette Miranda, Conor Moynihan, Liz Munsell, Karen Patterson, Ariel Lauren Pittman, Sean Ripple, Eve Schillo, Holly Shen, Rebecca Solnit, Lexi Lee Sullivan, Whitney Tassie, Charlie Tatum, Zoë Taleporos, Lori Waxman