We’re probably all off the hook for seeing it because the Fridericianvm’s Forrest Bess retrospective opened in February 2020. But we should all be very aware of the related edition made by James Benning.
Benning loves an extreme pursuit of solitude where he finds it. And in Kassel, he found it in Walter de Maria’s Vertical Earth Kilometer, which he turned into one of Bess’s mysterious, little cosmological pictures, complete with a handmade frame.
Any further similarities to Bess or connections to de Maria’s rod, I leave buried in the platz.
[breaking tumblr update] @voorwerk proposed it, and measurements confirm that Benning’s print is a life-size image of de Maria’s 2cm-wide rod. A Vertical Earth Kilometer Facsimile Object, if you will.]
James Benning: After Bess (solid brass round rod), 2020 [fridericianum.org]