Gerson Zevi Lives off the Land
This month, Gerson Zevi Gallery embarked on a 30-day “Land Art Road Trip” across the American Southwest, from The Spiral Jetty in Utah by Robert Smithson to Fort Worth, Texas. Gerson Zevi is a young online gallery founded by two friends, recent Harvard graduates Alexander Gerson and Matteo Zevi. The gallery aims to make art accessible for a young arts audience that has good taste but cannot find affordable, available art. Gerson Zevi’s platform connects talented young artists, curators, and collectors and gives them a place in the art world, and the Land Art Road Trip is the gallery’s boldest, most ambitious venture yet. In two white vans with trailers on their backs, Gerson and Zevi drove 30 international artists, writers, and creatives between the ages of 20 and 32 across half the country.
In the first two weeks of the trip, artists literally slept in the middle of Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, inside Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, next to Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, and in a small wooden hut in the middle of The Lightning Fields by Walter de Maria. The second two weeks of the trip centered mostly on museums, including the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the Chinati Foundation and Donald Judd’s house and studio in Marfa, Texas, and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. The drive has also incorporated national parks, including The Valley of Fire, with red burning rocks and petroglyphs, The Petrified Forest, with wood that has turned into beautiful colored rock, The Grand Canyon, and Quemado Lake. Traveling with tents in tow has never been so sophisticated—Gerson Zevi’s ensemble included a full kitchen, a DJ set, hammocks, art supplies, and teepees.
On the Land Art Road Trip, Gerson Zevi encourages creative output. As with an artist’s residency program, in exchange for a free trip, artists and writers are asked to create work that reacts to their surroundings. The trip is reaching its conclusion; the group will return to real life on Saturday. Follow their journey at Gerson Zevi’s Tumblr.
