*(( John Divola ))*

Zuma Series (folder two) / cb Zuma A 5_17_02. 1975
© JOHN DIVOLA
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Los Angeles based artist John Divola explores the contemporary landscape as a complex site of loss and potential. In the Zuma works from 1977, he entered a lone vacant house on Zuma Beach many times over the course of a year not only to record the decomposition and dilapidation of this structure, but to participate, like an natural elemental force of nature, in the transformation of the structure.
“On initially arriving I would move through the house looking for areas or situations to photograph. If nothing seemed to interest me I would move things around or do some spray painting. The painting was done in much the same way that one might doodle on a piece of paper. At that point I would return to the camera and explore what ever new potentials existed.”

Through the mechanics of photography John Divola truly reveals the nature of his subject, the stark flash of the camera lays bare all that is painted, in motion and burned against the background of ocean waves at sunrise or sunset. A remarkable body of work which skirts the borders of fiction and the real.