A desire to connect with nature and convey a point of view, a window onto a world that reflects contemplation about the world around us, is all here and certainly a long tradition exists of such. What might be taken for a slight gesture per De Maria's "Earth Room," for example, should be looked at more carefully by Gomez' use of reconstructed building materials to simulate a natural ground covering (not direct earth) and by illusionistic paintings and sculptures suggesting interior design all conflating the relationship between interior/exterior states of being. Cf. the banners that, in my mind, seal the deal for this entire setting as a proposal for a public space inside a commercial, art gallery. While Jay-Z, for example, plays softly, albeit cacaphonically, throughout the exhibition (note the colored speakers on the ground simulating rock (not rap)) and pithy aphorisms appropriated from songs of a gentler, bygone era adorn certain paintings with conflicting reversal, I am grounded in the present contemplating how the current condition looks about the same as the past, but on closer investigation, it is a puzzling subject regarding the passage of time in relation to what lies beneath the surface with no proposition. While there is substance allusion, there is only blue-in-the-face illusion.
