The Desert is a Good Place to Die, curated by Mitra Khorasheh, is a new exhibition of works created by Drew Conrad that utilizes dismembered parts of his old installations to build new sculptures intended to reflect ceremonial shrines of distant cultures. The structures vary in size, delicacy, and complexity, and call to mind feelings of vulnerability, dependency, and our fundamental ties to sentient beings. Conrad explained the theme in a statement: “A piece of me went missing when six years of creative output was erased from the world, now existing only as a ‘phantom limb.’ I have been known to say that the desert is a good place to die. This foreboding thought has existed since the first time I set foot in the arid lands of the Southwest, and traveled across and upward into the Rockies. It is a harsh, rugged, beautiful terrain that beckons me like my own modern day Manifest Destiny, but at times exudes a feeling that death is lingering in the air just beyond the horizon.”

Drew Conrad: The Desert is a Good Place to Die
CUAC
175 East 200 South
Salt Lake City
Through January 13, 2017