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Outdoor advertising gets a natural twist
Last year, artist Jordan Seiler allowed individuals to become adblockers in ‘public access project’, which gave the public keys to open adshels and cover up the ads.
Now, in a Visible Distance / Second Sight project, artist Jennifer Bolande is uncovering the landscapes billboards cover up, in a series of billboards featuring images of the landscape behind them.
Positioned on the side of the road in America’s Gene Autry Trail, the billboards have been cleverly positioned to line up the image with the landscape behind it, creating a seamless horizon when driving past it.
According to the Desert X website, “Looking up at the billboards our attention is drawn back to the landscape itself, pictured here as a stuttering kinesthetic of real and artificial horizons.”
Bolande’s work is part of the Desert X, a desert exhibition of art, which has turned the Coachella Valley into a canvas for site-specific work by artists. Each of the projects has been designed to amplify and articulate global and local issues.
