Diorama of Headless Glass Horses in Monument Valley

Four headless glass horses, modeled after the Playmobil figures I played with as a child and used to stage imagined Western scenarios, rest on a board layered with three charcoal drawings depicting Monument Valley, the quintessential Western-movie heaven. The diorama is supported by two wooden sawhorses placed in the Mojave Desert. Now, finally able to explore the landscape where the Western myth was born, I play with the artificiality of movie-set construction, relating it to the diorama technique and to the layers discernible in both, while also evoking traditional filmmaking processes and the influence of Étant donnés, Duchamp’s last work. An illusion within an illusion, a landscape within another landscape.