Kirsten Stoltmann
1R Gallery
A certain fantasy of the American Southwest as barren, inhospitable, timeless, stony, and impassive—Mars with sagebrush—has long held a grip on the American imagination. Kirsten Stoltmann, who lived in the Midwest before her recent relocation to California, assesses and reinforces this mythography with the fascination of an outsider. For her video projection Renegade (all works 2003), Stoltmann literally embedded herself in the denuded landscape, using a hidden armature that suspended her horizontally between, say, two outcroppings or two boulders. In a series of extended, meditative