Interstate: The American Road Trip is a group exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park, a scrappy urban park on the East River in Queens with views of Manhattan.
Socrates Sculpture Park was an abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite until 1986 when a coalition of artists and community members, under the leadership of artist Mark di Suvero, transformed it into an open studio and exhibition space for artists and a neighborhood park for local residents.
The exhibition was curated by Andrea Zittel, the maverick artist currently stationed in the California desert near Joshua Tree National Park, and represents a collaboration between Socrates and her High Desert Test Sites, a collection of experimental art sites. The theme of road trips is loosely and critically interpreted: Most of the artists focused on the grit and tedium of highway travel in America, rather than the romance.
The idea is most literally illustrated by Carolina Pedraza’s bright-green mailboxes, identical except for the addresses stenciled on their sides. But other pieces didn't immediately seem related: for example, R. Scott Mitchell’s tall rectangular tower looked like a bland modern sculpture until I read that it mocks the monotonous, reflective surfaces of office parks.
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