Alternative Perspective Of The West

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Re-SITE-ing the West: Contemporary Photographs from the Permanent Collection, an installation on view in conjunction with The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950.

The exhibition, which includes approximately thirty works by artists such as Lewis Baltz, Hank Wessel, and Mark Ruwedel, continues the dialogue about-and affirms the enduring mystique of-the place we call the West. By the 1970s, when most of the photographs on view were made, America's postwar optimism had faded. Anxiety about potential nuclear annihilation grew as the cold war raged.

With its weapons laboratories and test sites, the West was implicated in this new chapter of human history. Ravenous consumption sparked by American affluence further transformed the mythical guise of the Western landscape. Artists soon began to investigate our contradictory appetites for creation and destruction. Reflecting on the realities of rapid development and exploring the terrain as object, the artists in this exhibition celebrate the West as a site in and of itself, with imposed illusions, allusions, and romantic pretensions laid to rest.

The exhibition will be on view from March 4 to June 3, 2007. -- www.lacma.org