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

In fifteen works on paper, Robyn O’Neil depicts a snowy, isolated, mountainous spot seemingly hospitable only to fir trees and robust bearded men. In this alpinelike setting, O’Neil finds a rich backdrop for life’s starker passages, a place curiously conducive to allegory and ritual, where the passions and fantasies of humankind are enacted against a frigid and impassive Mother Nature. Existence seems sharper in her highlands, which are peopled only by men, often alone, confronting some crossroads from which they may or may not emerge. Allegory of Virtue and Vice (all works 2004) makes direct