![]() ![]() It thus understands itself as the product of an economy in which privacy and immateriality has been fully commodified. On the contrary, the work embodies the massive socio-economic changes that have taken place in the last forty years. ![]() While Barsuglia’s endeavor does share a palpable and explicit idealism as such – he suggests that the drive and walk to the pool should provide “time to reflect on social values, dreams and reality” – Social Pool is not a nostalgic affair. Conceived in the 1970s by artists in and around New York, already then the epicenter of the contemporary art scene, these works bore a critical response to and refusal of both the increasing commodification and institutionalization of art and the rampant destruction of the ecological environment. Located in a remote and scarcely populated geography – visitors are advised that several hours of driving from Los Angeles, plus a willingness “to walk a long distance to reach the pool from the nearest road,” are required to reach the destination – its location nods toward the phenomenon of large-scale Land Art installations in deserts around the American West, like Walter de Maria’s The Lightning Field in New Mexico, Robert Smithson’s famed Spiral Jetty, or Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels in Utah. ![]() White, unadorned and geometric, it is formally reminiscent of a Minimalist sculpture. Alfredo Barsuglia’s Social Pool is an eleven-by-five-feet wide pool in the Southern California desert, free for anybody to use. ![]()
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