Robert Smithson

Double Nonsite, California and Nevada

A quintessential example of Smithson’s Nonsite series, the sculptural component of this work mines rugged, naturally occurring materials from geological “sites,” and assembles them in the “nonsite” of a polished museum space.

This Double Nonsite is distinctive for gathering materials from two locations. Glassy obsidian from Mineral County, Nevada, contrasts porous cinder from California’s Mojave Desert. A framed map conflating the topography of these two locations hangs nearby. These volcanic rocks are prehistoric, and Smithson intentionally manipulates concepts of time by placing them in sleek, modern boxes.

Double Nonsite, California and Nevada embodies many such oppositions, measuring ideas of the past against the present, the organic against the fabricated, the sculptural against the two dimensional, and interior spaces against the outside world.

“My method operates more in a dualistic frame of reference,” Smithson says, “that gives rise to an infinite number of possibilities.”