Intriciate laser cutouts in the “HYBYCOZO” installation by Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu create dancing shadows on gallery walls
Immersive art from a famed desert festival in the American West has swept into Washington, infusing the buttoned-up US capitol with countercultural spirit.
“No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man,” which opens Friday at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, celebrates the annual late-summer gathering that sees a temporary city of some 75,000 people spring up in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
For a single week, massive experiential art installations tower over the dusty metropolis before Burning Man participants torch many of the works, including a giant wooden statue of a man, as a ritual embracing decommodification and temporality.
Thought it is perhaps best known for its bacchanalian atmosphere favoring sex and drugs, the annual event that started small in 1986 has evolved into a serious cultural and artistic movement, said the Renwick’s crafts curator Nora Atkinson, who spearheaded the show.
Marco Cochrane’s “Truth is Beauty” sculpture features in the “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” exhibition at the Renwick Gallery in Washington
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