El Mirage #01, 1976
From the series El Mirage
Silver Gelatin print
50,5 x 66 cm
Edition of 12
Grey Crawford’s El Mirage
(1975-78) series beginning in the mid-70s, consisted of numerous
experiments using metal etching plates, glass panes, mirrors, wood, and
darkroom manipulations in various performance-like positions on Mojave
Desert lake bed in Southern California. What makes these early images
important is how Crawford utilized the photographic process as a way to
alter the physical scale of his angular configurations. The significance
of these sculptures and visual performances, as pointed out by Lyle
Rexer, "are not in what they reveal about a specific event or situation,
but in how they reflect on everything around or beyond it: photography,
sculpture, space, place, and perception.” Crawford’s use of different
materials reflects his innate sense of activism, making art through the
act of doing. His El Mirage series combines his knowledge of art history with his use of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square
to a more collaborative dialogue with his contemporaries at the time,
such as Robert Smithsonian, Michael Heizer, and Carl Andre.