Pre-Burning Man Showcase Features Kinetic Art and Sculptures Coated with Playa Dust, Opens July 13
With upwards of 80,000 attendees, Nevada’s Burning Man is one of the largest outdoor festivals in the world. As a prelude to this year’s event in the last week of August, Santa Monica kinetic artist Dave Quick will be displaying “Return from the Burn and Other Work” at the Bergamot’s Lois Lambert Gallery.
The opening reception is Saturday, July 13, and the show closes on August 31, 2024. Quick attended Burning Man each of the last two years and installed large-scale “kinetic backpack” assemblage sculptures on the dry lake “playa.”
Three of the backpacks will be displayed in the gallery, complete with their original coating of insidious and carefully preserved Burning Man dust. Other new work for the show includes a global warming warning, “Rotisserie of Despair,” and the more light-hearted “I Can Row a Boat Canoe.”
Owing to the artist’s age (70), Quick facetiously declared his Burning Man Camp “AARP Field Office.” In compliance with the festival ethic of giving away something free, the artist gave away free prunes.
Dave Quick, an alumnus of UCLA and a Santa Monica resident of over three decades, has been building and showing kinetic art since the 1970s. The artist has participated in scores of exhibitions. Credits include: artist-in-residence Yosemite Renaissance (twice); artist-in-residence Kohler Museum; City of Santa Monica commission (along with fellow artist Elena Siff) for the inaugural GLOW Festival; President of the Board of Directors of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA); co-authored the book Motion Motion Kinetic Art with kinetic artist Jim Jenkins; Reporter-at-Large Santa Monica Mirror (including art reviews); and, Quick’s 2012 Santa Monica solo show, All Systems Go was part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.
