Fragments from Las Vegas (diptych)

Julieta Gil
Fragments from Las Vegas (diptych), 2017
Archival pigment print on Moab Entrada Rag
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the artist
2019.07

In 2017, Julieta Gil came to the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art to create 3D scans of objects from the museum’s collection of Mesoamerican ceramics. In Fragments from Las Vegas she alters the scans and displays them next to pictures of casinos from the city where the Barrick is located. Both sets of images are associated with particular places and times. The casinos are immediately identifiable as contemporary tourist attractions, while the styles and materials of the Mesoamerican objects situate them in the distant past. By fitting them both into the same series of shapes, the artist suggests the existence of a third place, a digital world, where everything exists in the same time and space. This intersection of real and digital existences is the crux of Gil's practice. “Digital life,” she writes, “is as real as any other kind.” The ceramics on display are the same ones Gil used in her work. Fragments from Las Vegas was created for Unsettled, a group exhibition organized by the Nevada Museum of Art. Curated by JoAnn Northrup in consultation with Ed Ruscha, the exhibition traveled to the Anchorage Museum, Alaska, and the Palm Springs Art Museum, California. (DKS)

To watch our Virtual Tour of this piece, please click on the following link: Barrick Museum of Art Virtual Tour - Julieta Gil.

Image description:
These two framed prints are composed of irregularly-shaped fragments set against white backgrounds. Each fragment is filled with a picture or texture. The arrangement of fragment-shapes in each print mirrors the one in the other print, but the images inside the shapes are different.
(Written by Andrea Noonoo)