Isolated Houses

Los Angeles is a centrifugal city, fundamentally American in its tendency toward the periphery. Isolated Houses focuses on the urban sprawl’s outer frontier. Here, 150 miles outside the city, the built environment comprises a handful of rudimentary structures, isolated cubes at the edge of the infinite plane of the desert. The dwellings that dot the landscape seem temporary and toy-like, but are the center of these photographs, the reason for their being. This work pays homage to those places where nature and culture intersect, and suggests that we all occupy a border zone between the natural and the artificial.

John Divola’s work is included in the permanent collections of such museums as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.