I’m in Italy for a few days, dangerously close to Venice, but exploring some of the art trail during my favorite time of the year. In the mid 00s when I was editing luxury city guides for Starwood, now Marriott’s the Luxury Collection, I used to research all the great art foundations of the world nearby where there were Grand Hotels, often now Starwood’s. There’s private foundations everywhere in the world of all sizes and like the collectors of experiences I am, I became very interested in visiting as many as possible. Work didn’t pay for these visits as the guides were focused on 4 sentence guide compilation, not art criticism, so I began to self fund these journeys. Over the last decade as I’ve transitioned out of travel content, I’ve slowly explored the art destinations myself and our writers believed noteworthy.

On Monday, I finally visited Fondazione Prada, the immense Rem Koolhaas complex in a former industrial distillery in Milan. Glass and steel and light and shadow. It was cinematic, as if Antonioni met Anderson and in the late October drizzle we saw so much thought provoking curation, but today I linger on one room by Walter DeMaria.

Three shiny 1955 Chevrolet Bel Airs neutered from the engines, immobile and pristine, sit parked in the gallery, each with a shaped rod stabbing through them. I had never seen the work before in person and marveled at its scale, precision and darkness as I wandered around it and thought again about my collected interest in the artist.

It’s been about a decade since I first discovered Walter, a brief mention at the end of an interview with KAWS where he told me about visiting the Lightning Field. I booked a trip there the next year and I went back again last and I’ll return again at some point in the future. Is this because I’m a land art fan or I just am one of those people that loves long durational land art? Probably a bit of both. I love the day long wander amongst the dust and rods, the sounds of feet shuffling through silence, the perspective of endless nature, the landscape as minimalism alive. DeMaria helped shape my ability to become an artist and every day as I struggle through creation, I often find myself back alone in the field, shuffling through memory.

It’s quite difficult to get to the Lightning Field, which I feel is a great filter and as well as an apt metaphor for how I feel about many things. And overall it’s quite challenging to view all of DeMaria’s works, of which it feels there are seldom or few, and as I travel around the world over long periods of time, I stumble upon them like rare coins in an archaeology game. Most of them one is banned from photographing so they’re quite easy to misremember which makes them memorable. They force me to pause and contemplate like discovering a treasure without historical knowledge. They make me feel in awe and often confused. I sometimes lie in bed in morning and try to remember the smell of the Earth Room. Although now I think about Delcy Morelos” Earthly Paradise, one of my favorite pieces of “earth art” a sub genre I’ll just create, comprised of soil and scents. Both DeMaria and Morelos prompt viewers to reconnect with the land in a critical gaze. Each in its reveal remind me that the joy and unease of capitalism, our erosion of society and our unease and wonder about the future are not new themes but ones that have been around for much longer than I’ve lived.

And that to me is the momentary joy as we live through a complex tragic moment of violent history, gasping for peace and understanding in the fall of 2023.