Michael Light*

Lot #41
Black Rock City in October, Looking West, Pleistocene Lake Lahontan, Gerlach, Nevada, 2017
Pigment print on Hahnemuhle Rag
40 x 50 x 0.125 inches
Edition 2 of 5
Courtesy the artist and Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco

About the Artwork

For twenty years, Bay Area photographer Michael Light has aerially photographed American space, pursuing themes of mapping, vertigo, human impact on the land, and various aspects of geologic time and the sublime. As we hover above the Burning Man city grid a month after the event, Light notes, “The alkali dust of the Black Rock is highly reflective, and if caught at just the right time of day and sun angle, can turn to a kind of hammered metallic gold.” While the event’s “Leave No Trace” ethic of structural removal holds true, each of the countless tracks and lines depicted in the dust tells of a different kind of tracing, a record of innumerable quests and journeys mirroring the comings and goings of all the world’s great conurbations. Light has exhibited globally, and his work has been collected by SFMOMA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others.

Retail Value: $7,500