Lance McGoldrick
On View
The Window box at vladem contemporary
Lance McGoldrick
Using salvaged materials from local scrap yards and dumping sites, Albuquerque-based artist Lance McGoldrick creates sculptures and installations that explore the histories of waste, resilience, and memory in the high desert. I Love You, New Mexico, Te Quiero, Nuevo México reclaims abandoned and overlooked objects to reveal the poetic dimensions of decay and the lingering traces of human presence in the American Southwest.
At the height of Route 66 culture, the Chevrolet Impala emerged from General Motors’ most iconic vehicles, becoming a symbol of desegregation, freedom, and social change in the American West. The vehicle remains an enduring touchstone in lowrider communities and West Coast hip-hop. McGoldrick’s stripped and weathered 1964 Chevy Impala evokes these layered histories while also recalling the hyper-local aesthetics of abandoned vehicles in the desert landscape, car graveyards, and chop shops.
Cut in half, the vehicle is emptied of its original utility – transformed in a memorial to the impermanence of material culture and shifting values we assign to objects over time. Its nighttime illumination, glowing through the headlights and windshield, casts a dreamlike aura that speaks to desire, hope, and the enduring sense of liberation found on long, open stretches of road.
You can see more of Lance’s work on his website: