09/02/2026
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Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present Desert Lenses, an exhibition of new work by Ry Rocklen, on view September 12 through October 24, 2026.
Ry Rocklen has spent more than two decades making ordinary objects—rocking chairs, drying racks, abandoned cars, shopping carts—behave unexpectedly. In Desert Lenses, these familiar forms become uncanny vantages for surveilling the high desert around his home in Joshua Tree. Rather than simply depicting the wilderness, however, Rocklen folds these objects through a looking glass and back into themselves. Using photography, mold-making, and glaze decals, he turns each form into a kind of container or frame, its surface carrying an image of the desert it inhabits. Part sculpture, part landscape, part optical illusion, Rocklen forces these objects to look at the unvarnished realities of the places that birthed them.
Ry Rocklen
Rocky Sunday, 2026
Ceramic, glaze, glaze decal
11 x 9 x 5 1/4 inches
27.9 x 22.9 x 13.3 cm.
Ry Rocklen
