Decoding the Desert
I did this piece as a commission for a collector in Palm Springs in the Fall of 2018, inspired by the wild flowers and cactus of the desert, I visited Zion Canyon in Utah and suddenly the geometry, color and texture of the desert come into picture, in an experience that capture the exotic shapes and the beauty of the desert in a way I have never experienced before.
The region also has a tradition of indigenous cultures, so I embedded symbols and techno driven imaginary that always fascinated me, the mixing of ancient and the new in one harmonic strong image. The piece has a mystic and futuristic feel driven by sensual and exotic shapes capturing the magnetism of the desert landscape.
Decoding the Desert 2017, (detail) from artist Guillermo Bert
Decoding the Desert 2017, from artist Guillermo Bert, Mixed Media on Plexi, 62″ x 62″ 12″ deep
Art dealer Pierrette Van Cleve & Guillermo Bert at the Palm Spring Museum theater, for the opening of Unsettled
From the series Incubator, a few samples of the pieces at the Palm Spring collection.
Decoding the Desert 2017, with artist Guillermo Bert in front of his recent installed piece in a Palm Spring collection
In the last few years I have been combining ancient culture with contemporary technology, playing with the idea of how culture goes in circles and after a big pilgrimages, we return home and find ourselves confronting our past… for example, the contemorary concerns with the planet and nature in today’s environmentalism, meditation, reusable energy can be found in Native American cultures where preservation of their environment and honoring nature were paramount.
The graphics used in the bar codes and microchips today resembles very vividly the kind of iconography that the ancient cultures developed, from Mayan to Mapuche to Navajo or Acoma. It appears that this basic geometry has in its basic nature the structure and proportion of timeless experiences and comprehension of life and spirituality.
Decoding the Desert 2017 from artist Guillermo Bert recently installed in a mid century Modernist house in Palm Spring.