Monte Vista Projects is proud to present “Islomania” a multi-media installation by Los Angeles-based artist McLean Fahnestock.

In 1935, the artist’s Grandfather Sheridan Fahnestock and Great Uncle Bruce Fahnestock embarked with a small sailing crew on the first of three expeditions to the South Pacific. In partnership with the Museum of Natural History in New York, their expeditions explored uncharted waters while the crew collected specimens and native music for the museum. While sailing through the Coral Sea, off the coast of Nendo, they came upon a small chain of sandy islands and named them after their boat “Director.” However, “The Good Director Islands” are not on any map, there are only what appear to be open waters at the coordinates for which they are published. Perhaps they have been consumed by the ocean, or perhaps they never really existed, perhaps it is the unmitigated notion of these islands that establishes the illusion of islomania.

For the artist—embarking on her own artistic expeditions in the wake of her predecessors—islomania is not just a partiality, but rather, a full-blown obsession. Impetuously assembled, Islomania is part of a larger research based project called “The Fahnestock Expedition,” involving years of research, merging together imagery, sound, film, performances, photographs, dreams, complex anecdotes, travelogues, and dialogue with librarians and visits to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC where the Fahnestock South Sea collection is maintained.

As a long-time influence for explorers, artists, conquerors, writers, expatriates, reality television viewers, all of whom have found themselves rapt in the illusion of the exotic desert island; the illusionary concept of islomania reserves itself as a place of solitude, discovery, and escape. The fantasy of discovering the uninhabited island, where scale inevitably shifts is an apt metaphor for the artist in search of the new.