Latest news with #DesertX
NDTV
09-05-2025
- Automotive
- NDTV
Ducati Monster And DesertX To Get New 890 cc Engine Next Year Onwards
Ducati's 937 cc L-Twin Engine is one of the most popular workhorses in the middleweight motorcycle category and until recently it used to power quite a few models in Ducati's line-up. The Italian company showcased a new 890 cc L-Twin engine at EICMA 2024 and it has already been fitted in the likes of the Streetfighter V2, Panigale V2 and the Multistrada V2. And now, leaked documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) confirm that the Monster and the DesertX range will get the new engine as well, starting 2026. The new 890 cc L-Twin, is Ducati's lightest twin-cylinder engine till date, weighing in at just 54 kg. Presently, the motor is offered in two states of tune. It makes 115.6 hp at 92.1 Nm in the Multistrada V2 and 120 hp along with 93.3 Nm in the Panigale V2 and Streetfighter V2. The state of tune for the DesertX and Monster motorcycles will be revealed once the models are launched next year. Expect all these motorcycles to be launched in India with new engines in the coming months. The current DesertX, DesertX Rally and DesertX Discovery get the 937 cc L-Twin engine which is tuned to produce 110 hp at 9,250 rpm along with 92 Nm at 6,500 rpm. The engine is paired to a 6-speed gearbox, with a bi-directional quick-shifter. On the other hand, the Monster gets the same 937 cc motor which makes 111 hp at 9,250 rpm along with 93 Nm at 6,500 rpm. In India, prices of the Ducati Monster start at Rs. 12.95 lakh while the prices for the DesertX range starts at Rs. 18.33 lakh and go up to Rs. 23.71 lakh (ex-showroom). Source:
Forbes
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Desert X 2025: The Outdoor Art Phenomenon You Can't Miss
Desert X 2025 Desert X Transforming the rugged landscape of the Coachella Valley into a mesmerizing outdoor art exhibition, Desert X 2025 is a must-see event on display until May 11, 2025. Using the desert's stark beauty as a backdrop, visionary artists from around the world explore themes of 'indigenous futurism, design activism, and colonial power asymmetries.' Immerse yourself in experiential pieces, giant sculptures, and mind-bending installations, learning the fascinating stories behind each of the artworks. To enjoy all of the installations and the desert setting, it's best to make a trip out of it—here's what to see and where to stay during your time there. Desert X 2025 Desert X Now in its fifth year, Desert X is uniquely accessible and inviting for art aficionados and curious travelers alike. All you need is a car, your cell phone to map exactly where each artwork is, and time to explore. Since the majority of installations are relatively remote, the Desert X website provides exact coordinates to help navigate to each artwork. If you're arriving in the Coachella Valley at sunset, head to Sanford Biggers's piece 'Unsui (Mirror),' where his two giant sequin cloud sculptures glimmer against the cotton-candy sky as the sun sets. Clouds are a recurring theme in Biggers' work, symbolizing unencumbered movement and transcendence. Sarah Meyohas's immersive installation 'Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams' utilizes the sun and light-shaping technology to let visitors project words and images as reflections. Kapwani Kiwanga's 'Plotting Rest' is a pavilion-like sculptural structure inspired by the quilting motif known as 'flying geese,' which served as guidance for those escaping slavery during the era of the Underground Railroad. Quilts that hung from windows and clotheslines served as coded messages to mitigate danger and find a path to safety. Agnes Denes's 'The Living Pyramid' is 'both a monumental sculpture and an environmental intervention.' The structure explores Denes' lifelong exploration of pyramids merged with nature's impermanence, using native plants that grow and decay over time. Korakia Pensione Korakia Pensione Ideally, you'll want to spread out your Desert X art exploration over a few days to give yourself a leisurely amount of time to drive and absorb the visuals and messaging of each artwork. Located in the heart of Palm Springs, Korakia Pensione is a picturesque property to match your aesthetically enticing trip. What was once the spacious villa of Scottish painter Gordon Coutts is now an adults-only resort with Mediterranean and Moroccan influences. There are 28 uniquely designed bungalows filled with trinkets and décor to give each its own distinct character. Start your day sitting at one of the outdoor tables in their blooming and beautiful courtyard, enjoying breakfast dishes like huevos rancheros or yogurt parfaits with fruit, before you drive to see your first artwork of the day. Once it gets very hot around midday, return to Korakia to lounge by one of their two pools, cooling off with a margarita in hand. For larger groups and families, the newly opened Auric House features six bedrooms and bathrooms and a private pool. A haven for creatives since it first opened, Korakia is a colorful and eclectic oasis to match your art-filled Desert X experience. Korakia Pensione Korakia Pensione Desert X is more than just an art exhibition; it's an intersection between creativity, humanity and the beauty of nature. Don't miss your chance to see extraordinary art works set against the harsh, hypnotic beauty of the desert — you'll have to wait until 2027 to see the iteration of this one-of-a-kind art experience.
Forbes
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The 'X' Factor: DesertX 2025, Coachella Valley, CA
Outdoor artworks, land art, site-specific installations speak to a tradition that exists outside museums and galleries, that is accessible and available to all willing to travel to a given destination, and which in many cases intervene in complimentary and contrasting ways with the environment. DesertX 2025, taking place in the Coachella Valley (i.e. the greater Palm Springs area) March 8 through, May 11, features 11 artists who have created work for specific locations throughout the valley. Downloading the DesertX app gives you info locations and driving directions to each. Susan Davis, is the founder and President of DesertX and this year's co- curators are Neville Wakefield and Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas. The corporate sponsor is Jose Cuervo's 1800 Tequila (and there will be a DesertX Mexico). The eleven artists featured in this year's iteration are a very diverse group that includes Agnes Denes, 94 years young, and Sara Meyohas, 33 years old, as well as Sanford Biggers, Alison Saar, Jose Davila, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Raphael Hefti, Kimsooja, Ronald Rael, Muhannad Shono, and Kapwani Kiwanga. This is the fifth iteration of DesertX. Everyone still talks about Doug Aitken's 2017 Desert X installation, Mirage, a mirrored house. Other memorable works from Past Desert X are Nancy Cahill Baker's Augmented Reality installation in 2019 and Gerald Clarle's 2023 installation. This year's DesertX may be the best yet. On opening weekend when I visited not all the artworks were open to the public yet (they probably all are by now). Installation view Alison Saar, Soul Service Station, DesertX 2o25 What were my favorites? Alison Saar's Soul Service Station is a remarkable artwork. It looks like a Depression-era gas station of the American West and is filled with reclaimed tin tiles and other items and materials. School children from throughout the Coachella Valley were engaged to create their own devotional objects for the interior of the station (introducing them to artmaking). installation view of Soul Service Station by Alison Saar, DesertX 2025 Inside stands a life-sized hand-carved guardian of the station in service station overalls. Saar's recent sculptures have explored violence against women and the legacy of slavery. On occasion, her sculptural figures such as Topsy, have been fearsome and rage-bearing. However, Soul Service Station is meant as an oasis, a figure of pride, strength, and joy. Outside the station there is a gas pump. Rather than the expected gas pump filler neck, there is an item in the shape of a conch shell. When you place it next to your ear, you hear a blues poem sung by the Los Angeles based poet Harryette Mullen. Soul Service station is a must-see and I truly hope that, post-Desert X, it finds a permanent home. Soul Service Station was also sponsored by the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. On site at the press preview was Kimberly Davis of Saar's gallery LA Louver who believes it will happen. intallation view of Sarah Meyohas' Truth Speaks in Slanted Beams, DesertX 2025 Sarah Meyohas' installation, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams, uses a caustic spiral that leads from the road into the desert and then rises and falls looking like a piece of the Guggenheim Museum sunk in sand. The bends in the caustic creation surround desert plants. There are also reflectors that can be moved but that project words from the poetic phrase, Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams. Jacob Jonas dance troupe, The Company, DesertX 2025, activation at artwork by Sarah Meyohas At the press review, there was an activation at Meyohas' installation by the Jacob Jonas dance group, The Company. The dancers led in a file to the sculpture and moved around it doing a series of movements from Jonas' athletic, kinetic, dance vocabulary. It was a great collaboration (I know it was filmed – perhaps it could be an AR enhancement during the exhibition?). Regardless, the artwork stands on its own (literally and metaphorically) and is everything one hopes to find in a DesertX installation. The Living Pyramid by Agnes Denes, DesertX 2025 Agnes Denes' The Living Pyramid is the centerpiece at Sunnylands, the former Annenberg home in Rancho Mirage turned museum and conference center. It is a very large construction of terraces filled with live native plants. So although the form of the sculpture is constant, how it looks is constantly evolving and changing. At the press preview, Denes made the statement (via a filmed segment) that, 'My pyramids are an optimistic edifice in the time of turmoil.' As a further explanation, Denes says in the exhibition publication that 'art exists in a dynamic, evolutionary world where objects are processes and forms are dynamic patterns, where measure and concepts are relative, and reality is forever changing.' Part of the experience, and the fun of Desert X, is driving around searching for the artworks. Waze and the DesertX app led me on drives through parts of the valley I'd never seen, including high mountain roads, and old downtowns in Desert Hot Springs and corners and canyons I'd never been to before. Installation view Sanford Biggers, DesertX 2025 The other artworks I saw included: Sanford Biggers whimsical clouds that appear in the sky in Palm Springs; Jose Davila's uncanny marble blocks that make you think you are walking in a Roman ruin; Raphael Hefti's simple and elegant work, in a horizontal material is stretched across a canyon so that it twists in the wind and reflects light at different places when it does; Ronald Rael who used a solar-powered robot to 3D print an adobe maze making a statement about the marriage of indigenous knowledge and current tech in ways that are cheap and environmentally sound; and Cannupa Hanska Lugerm who created a nomadic desert vehicle and mobile home as part of a post-apocalyptic futurist narrative, which will see the vehicle exhibited at three different locations in the Coachella Valley. There are always plenty of reasons to go out to Palm Springs and other destinations in the Coachella Valley. DesertX 2025, however, presents a different way to experience the landscape, support not just the land but the people and the artisans who live there, You Should you want to support DesertX, there are ways to get involved and be a sponsor or donor or make a tax-deductible contribution. And, yes, there is also Merch, very cool T-shirts, hoodies, stickers etc…. If Art is about seeing, then DesertX 2025 challenges us to think about the desert, its past, its future, the wind, the ground, the indigenous plants, and ourselves and the world in new ways.
Arab News
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Muhannad Shono: ‘This work is fragile. It is not here forever'
RIYADH: Saudi contemporary artist Muhannad Shono is the sole representative of the Middle East at this year's Desert X — the site-specific international art exhibition in California's Coachella Valley — which runs until May 11. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Shono's piece, entitled 'What Remains,' consists of 60 long strips of locally-sourced synthetic fabric infused with native sand. 'The fabric strips, orientated to align with the prevailing winds, follow the contours of the ground, fibrillating just above its surface,' a description of the work on the Desert X website reads. 'As the wind direction shifts, the natural process of aeolian transportation that forms dunes is interrupted, causing the fabric to tangle and form chaotic bundles. In this way, the ground itself becomes mutable — a restlessly changing relic or memory.' This isn't the first time Shono has created a large-scale installation in the desert. At Desert X AlUla in 2020, he presented 'The Lost Path,' composed of 65,000 black plastic tubes snaking through the Saudi desert — a work exploring themes of transformation, memory and impermanence. And while 'What Remains' is an entirely separate piece of art, it also delves into those topics, as has much of Shono's work over the past decade. 'I'm first-generation Saudi,' Shono tells Arab News. 'A year after I was born, I was given the nationality. For half of my life, I didn't feel Saudi. I'd say Saudi was an authentic space that had specific motifs and cultural narratives that we were very disconnected from as a family. Why? Because we're immigrants; my father is not Saudi, and my mom is not Saudi. 'But now I think the narrative of what is 'Saudi' is changing,' he continues. 'And it feels like it's part of this correction.' A feeling of not belonging was apparent in Shono's early artistic endeavors. He loved comic books and wanted to create his own because he couldn't find a true representation of himself in them. 'Saudis expect you to produce a figure they can relate to — with Saudi features or skin color — but I didn't think they could relate to me,' he says. 'I was more referencing myself, and what I thought 'home' looked like, or the 'hero' looked like, so there was a disconnect there.' That disconnect continues to manifest in his work. 'You can see it in Desert X and in a lot of my other projects tapping into materiality. I realized I couldn't really fully connect with the materiality of the narrative of being Saudi. 'An interesting psychological thing that I haven't really come to grips with is that I'm more comfortable doing work in Saudi because I'm responding to this natural source material,' he continues. 'I'm disrupting — I'm offering divergence, narratives that can spill out from that experience of the work. I'm invested in the narrative of what's happening (in Saudi). I think it's the closest I've felt to being 'at home.' Something that I was missing in the beginning was being connected to the narrative of the place, because if you engage with that narrative, you can call it home. 'When I go to California, I miss the landscape (of Saudi) that I'm contrasting. In California, it's not juxtaposed against the experience of growing up. I'm still figuring out how to take these feelings and be able to show work overseas, because my backdrop is missing — the backdrop of Saudi.' His early interest in comic books, he says, was partly down to 'being able to create the world, the space, the setting for the story.' That was also a reason he decided to study architecture at university. 'I felt like it was creative problem solving,' he says. 'A lot of my projects that I did in college were in 'world making.' My graduation project ended up being the creation of a whole city, and how it would grow on a random landscape. I got kind of caught up in the urban planning of it — the streets, and the rivers flowing through it. I never really got to the architectural part of designing a building.' But that willingness to explore ideas in ways others might not has made Shono one of the Kingdom's most compelling contemporary artists. 'I've created my own kind of material palette, or language, or library, that I use,' he says. In his current work, 'The land is holding the narrative on this adventure within the seemingly barren landscape,' he explains. 'These land fabrics become this idea of being able to roll up, carry and unroll ideas of belonging: What is home? How do we carry home?' Shono and the team who helped him install 'What Remains' had to 'constantly adapt expectations' based on understanding the land and the environmental conditions, he says. It took them around a month, working seven or eight hours a day, to put it in place — flattening, aligning, and flipping fabric under Shono's direction. His vision was clear, but he also allowed instinct to guide him. 'This work is fragile,' he says. 'It's an expression that is not here forever… that will change. And my ideas will change, the way I think about stories and concepts through my work. It's important to change.' With 'What Remains,' he is offering that same opportunity to viewers. He wonders: 'What portals will you pass through, through this unrolling of the earth in front of you?' And change is a vital part of the work itself. 'They're always different,' Shono says of the fabric strips. 'At some points, they're opaque and earth-like — almost like a rock. But when the wind picks up, they become lightweight — like sails — and they animate and come to life. And when the light hits as they move through the sky, they reveal their translucency and there's this projection of the trees and bushes and nature that they're almost wrapped around or sailing past.' Although the 'What Remains' seen by Desert X visitors on any particular day will not be the same 'What Remains' seen by visitors on any other day, or even any other hour, one part of it, at least, is constant. 'The work is a self-portrait,' Shono says. 'Always.'
Los Angeles Times
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A modern Stonehenge rises in Desert Hot Springs: Here are the standouts in Desert X 2025
Desert X, the biennial exhibition of site-related installation art commissioned for varied locations in and around Palm Springs, continues to shrink. From 16 artists for the inaugural in 2017, and the same number (plus three collectives) two years later, subsequent iterations have gotten steadily smaller. Just 11 artists are participating in the latest version, with only nine works ready at its March 8 opening. (The remaining two were expected to be completed soon.) Smaller isn't necessarily lesser, of course, although few of these projects are compelling. The somewhat more compact map of Coachella Valley sites being used this time is one benefit: No driving 198 miles to and from the vicinity of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway and the edge of the Salton Sea, as was necessary in 2019. Still, Desert X 2025 does feel thin. Only three installations stand out — one at the foot of a hiking trail in a Palm Desert park, the other two in dusty landscapes in Desert Hot Springs. The knockout is 'The act of being together,' a monumental construction of stacked blocks of marble by Jose Dávila, 51, who is based in Guadalajara, Mexico. Twelve massive chunks of white stone were quarried there, transported in their raw state across the border and piled in six pairs adjacent to a Desert Hot Springs wind farm. The shrewd, vivifying juxtaposition pits crude, primal, static stone, its huge weight pressing the ground beneath your feet, against sleek, industrially elegant windmills spinning overhead to catch the invisible airstream and generate similarly imperceptible energy. Five chunky pairs are arrayed around a central stack. Inevitable are thoughts of ancient Stonehenge, or perhaps primordial cairns marking trails or burial grounds in premodern societies. You are at a ceremonial site, but here the ritual is distinctive and contemporary: The pomp and circumstance in biennial art exhibitions like Desert X beckon the faithful to assemble from far and wide. Borders get crossed, materially and conceptually. Dávila's sculpture is conscious of its role as an engine for 'the act of being together.' What's beautifully articulated is the precariousness of that event. Dávila has stacked the stones carefully, with no sense of physical danger in the way one massive rock is placed atop the other. Yet, these compositions are not neat and clean. Upper blocks project out several feet from their base, sit on the edge or stand tall and lean. These sculptural elements build on the history of simplified geometric forms in Richard Serra's exceptional minimalist 'prop' works, where massive plates of lead and steel lean against each other, providing contrarian weight to stand up and defy gravity's relentless pull. But, unlike the industrial materials that Serra leaned and stacked, this sculpture's classical legacy of marble is Dávila's chosen reference. Art's past is juxtaposed with the desert's advanced industrial turbines. Dávila's huge sculptural ensemble appears permanent, which would be great, although its elements may be dispersed when Desert X closes on May 11, as these projects typically are. (According to a spokesperson, the sculpture's ultimate fate is under discussion.) About five minutes away, a poetic gas station by Los Angeles artist Alison Saar awaits your car's arrival. 'Soul Service Station' derives from an earlier, considerably different work the artist made 40 years ago in Roswell, N.M., when she was not yet 30. Signs assembled from vehicle tires line a dusty pedestrian route from the paved road to her gas station — a cleverly suggestive Shell station, apparently, given the chrome conches adorning the pump handles. (Ten million years ago, the Coachella Valley was at the bottom of a sea.) The signs' messages are winking bits of inspirational doggerel by poet Harryette Mullen ('When your heart has fallen flat, we pump it up.') At the end of the short trail, the fuel offered inside Saar's compact service station, a shiny tin shack sheltered among trees, is spiritual nourishment. The sustenance is presided over by a sculpture of an Amazonian woman, who wields a squeegee rather than a lance. ('When you can't see ahead, we wipe your windshield clean and clear.') She, like the charming shack, is sheathed in sheets of old-fashioned ceiling tin, a staple of the artist's work. This signature material dates to 19th century America, when it emerged as a mass-produced, middle-class design element to compete with unique, aristocratic plaster ceilings. If accessible democratic architectural material can be identified, this is it. A half-hour away in Palm Desert, Swiss artist Raphael Hefti, 46, has stretched an impossibly long strip of reinforced fire-hose material, jet black on one side and mirror-bright silver on the other. The aerial strip, swaying overhead in the breeze, is roughly 1,300 feet long — more than 3 ½ football fields. The band is anchored from a high rocky cliff at one end, near the start of a well-used hiking trail, and a tall steel support drilled into the flat desert at the other. An engineering feat, for sure, the resulting catenary curve in the sagging line is a visual treat as well, buoyant and struggling against the pull of gravity for no other reason than to delight. Without the structural principles behind catenary curves, there would be no Gothic cathedrals or Renaissance domes — nor, for that matter, any lacy spiderwebs. Hefti's curve is shallow in the extreme, given the vast length, and suggests environmental, maybe even planetary scale. Twisting in space, the slender mirrored-line flashes in and out of sight, depending on the time of day, the angle of the sun and shifting weather conditions. At night in ambient light, it's barely visible, competing with a canopy of stars. In a rugged desert park, the linear sculpture feels at once bold and fragile, muscular and delicate. Hefti has titled the work 'Five things you can't wear on TV,' a sly reference to cautions against wearing pinstripes on camera, lest moiré patterns interfere with a television monitor's crisp electronic imagery. The title positions the perceptually fluctuating work as existing outside routine contemporary aspirations; instead, it occupies a witty place in a vaguely absurd counterculture. The exhibition, organized by Desert X artistic director Neville Wakefield and curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, director at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, N.Y., includes additional installations of relatively routine fare by Sanford Biggers, Agnes Denes, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Sarah Meyohas, Ronald Real and Muhannad Shono. Still to come: Kimsooja and Kipwani Kiwanga. The postpandemic sluggishness in arts fundraising and audience numbers still being felt by many cultural institutions may explain this year's more modest ambitions. The once-exciting biennial program also shot itself in the foot in 2019, taking a multimillion-dollar donation from Saudi Arabia. Desert X is still co-organizing installations there, in what is a blatant case of art-washing to polish the soiled international reputation of a murderous, absolute monarchy where free expression is forbidden. Three works in the Coachella Valley are as worthwhile as any Desert X has yet produced, but that's barely enough for a festival.
