John Divola

John Divola: As Far as I Could Get (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 73 and 78-79

John Divola: Three Acts (Aperture, 2006), unpaginated

While jogging with a friend on Zuma Beach in Malibu, photographer John Divola discovered an abandoned house. Visiting either early in the morning or late at night, Divola photographed the ever-changing disintegrating home, sometimes spray painting patterns or abstract shapes on the walls. 

‘Every time that I would return to this house I would notice that it had changed. Often it was a minor change, some rearranged papers and a few empty beer cans in the corner. The change was at times more substantial, like arriving to find the house full of large tree branches that had recently been set on fire and extinguished, water still dripping from the ceiling . . . My participation was not so much one of intellectual consideration as one of visceral involvement.’ (John Divola, 1980)

Works from this series have been widely collected by museums including the national Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American art, New York; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, among many others. Early prints infrequently appear at auction.