Digging Beneath Ghost Lake is a multimedia installation with sculpture, video, and two-dimensional works by artists Dave R. Clark, Jennifer Gunlock and Katie E. Stubblefield that imagines a strange, fictional desert landscape where water, and resulting human activity, were once present.

Taking its name from extinct California lakes that temporarily resurfaced during winter superstorms, this exhibition reflects on our dependency on water, and either our adaptation or reaction to its very capricious nature. As visitors meander through a surreal desert scene, they come across relics of past (or future?) human presence in what appears to be a former ocean or lake. In addition to archeological debris, newly sprouted and rather peculiar plants are also present, whose bodies are composed of both natural and human-built materials. This deserted lakebed inquires what devastating event caused a people to vacate, what was left behind, what grew back, and what new life emerged and adapted in its aftermath?

Dave R. Clark’s Mechanicals sprout from the installation’s floor like desert flowers or invasive plants after a winter’s deluge. With their radio antennae reaching optimistically upward, these alien-like plants appear to be sending and receiving signals to and from some unknown—possibly no longer existent—source. Taking inspiration from dystopian pop culture and steampunk motifs, Clark’s assemblages and sculpture, composed of metal detritus, wires, and cement, are both quirky and disturbing, seemingly functional yet not functional.

Jennifer Gunlock’s video projections were produced at her July/August 2023 artist residency at PLAYA in Summer Lake, Oregon, where she observed the co-mingling of both solid and liquid material in the landscape. Walking along the drying lakebed, she found the ground’s firmness to unpredictably shift between dry and cracked and soft and malleable, while at the pond insects danced along its green surface. The videos convey intense cyclical shifts between drought and deluge, particularly in response to California’s recent experience with weather whiplash.

As a longtime resident of the port city of Long Beach, California, Katie E. Stubblefield tackles the concept of ghost nets: fishing nets that continue to trap animals and debris long after disuse. Her sculptures and installations depict abandoned, low-tech, semi-functional objects that reveal a dependency on the ocean and awkward strategies to exploit it for one’s livelihood. Stubblefield also explores the current shape of California’s coastline with drawings on plexiglass that expose industry adulterating an otherwise bucolic landscape.

Contact: admin@jennifergunlock.com
Click here to view artworks in the exhibition