MARFA — Current Chinati Foundation artist in residence Dean Erdmann will give a free talk about their ongoing work this Thursday, June 26, at the Marfa Book Co. at 6 p.m. The artists’ two-month stint has involved researching the geopolitics of the Permian Basin, specifically the exploitation of sand used in fracking.
Erdmann, a UC San Diego professor, works in moving and still images as well as in sculpture and installation. For their project in development, Artemis Moon Rocket Regolith, they plan to use a lunar regolith simulant, a sand high in silica found on the moon, to make glass objects. Ermann said their work often involves “tracing material genealogies.” ICON, the company constructing the new El Cosmico, is also working with NASA to 3D print objects on the moon and on Mars using lunar and martian regolith.
While materiality is already in mind, like the potential use of black glass which is both reflective and absorptive, an alluring “tension,” Erdmann said creating a physical body of work is about balancing all the ideas they are considering with visual appeal. “It’s really a matter of chasing all the tails and then figuring out what the object is that crystallizes some of the threads in really meaningful ways, but also in ways that people are interested in spending time with,” Erdmann said.
The artist grew up in the Mojave Desert and is engaging with the idea of arid environments as remote sites “away from public scrutiny,” used to house infrastructure like detention centers, prisons, military bases and AI data centers. The use of the desert landscape as a training ground, whether it be for war in the Middle East, or for space landings, is also being considered.
Erdmann’s residency has been marked by visits to the McDonald Observatory as well as the International Rocket Engineering Competition in Midland this month. In their research they are interested in speaking with both astronomers and geologists — experts focused on opposite ends of the Earth — they explained. “My work is often about sight and vision and these reciprocal views of places, looking out to look in, looking down to look up and any repetitions of that,” Erdmann said.
The artist is hoping to return to the Trans-Pecos in the future, potentially visiting a sand mining operation, Blue Origin and more. They note the work is sprawling, and takes time to transform into something more personal. “When I’m starting a big project I cast my net as wide as possible,” Erdmann said.
“It’s always intertwining the personal and the geopolitical, because that just creates a more helpful way of engaging with these ideas that feel so incomprehensible or outside of the scale of a singular body,” they added.
For Erdmann, the conversations around energy infrastructure, technology, labor, time, acceleration and geopolitics should be nuanced, and broad. An example of one “temporal conundrum” they’re ruminating on is the consumption of the prehistoric — fossil fuels formed over millions of years — for “the brevity of modern acceleration.”
“I think there’s ways that we can have these conversations, and having more voices involved is imperative,” Erdmann said.