What Comes After the American Dream?

Banner Image: Installation view of Afterimage by Brighton McCormick. Photographs by Laura Laptsevitch.

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Silverwood Park is just minutes from downtown Minneapolis, right along Silver Lake. The park features an art gallery, education facilities, and a coffee shop, as well as picnic sites, fishing, and canoe and kayak rentals for those who enjoy the outdoors.

Dedicated to fostering creative connections between people and the natural world, Silverwood's visitor center has hosted exhibitions since opening in 2009, with a focus on elevating local artists who explore themes of nature. Currently on view through July 31st are two exhibitions: "Afterimage" by Brighton McCormick and "Burning Desert" by Horacio Devoto. I visited Silverwood on a beautiful, sunny June day and saw both shows in person.

Afterimage | Brighton McCormick

Silverwood features two gallery spaces: a circular gallery for larger exhibitions and a lengthy hallway for smaller shows. Brighton McCormick occupies the circular space with Afterimage. McCormick is a sculptor and arts educator living and working in South Minneapolis. They currently teach at the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center and serve as an Assistant Professor at Hamline University. Their interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture, gallery installation, community-engaged projects, and public art, primarily utilizing metalworking and reinterpreted found objects.

I could see that thread of metalworking and found materials running throughout the exhibition. Afterimage in particular explores the American dream, or rather, what is left behind after the dust settles. The concept feels especially timely as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary.

Throughout the exhibition are symbols of domestic life, including the white picket fence often associated with the American Dream. One of the standout works for me is a mailbox sculpture.

 

Installation view of Don't Forget to Check the Mail, 2026. Photograph by Laura Laptsevitch.

 

There is something intentionally artificial about it. The mailbox itself is an ordinary metal mailbox, mounted on a wooden post. The grass surrounding it, however, is the bright plastic turf more commonly found in football stadiums. The tension between the artificial grass, the real wood, and metal mailbox creates a sculpture that is simultaneously campy, playful, and slightly unsettling.

McCormick frequently takes ordinary structures and displaces them from their regular contexts. One sculpture features a ladder suspended from the ceiling. Walking under a ladder is traditionally considered bad luck, and the work transforms that familiar superstition into something both humorous and a bit ominous.

 

Installation view of I Wish I Had Been Nicer to Them: Bunked Ladder, 2026. Photograph by Laura Laptsevitch.

 

The latter hangs across from a sculpture called As Seen on TV. Made from steel, hand-bent glass tubes, and buckthorn roots excavated from Silverwood Park, the sculpture knowingly references American's complicated relationship with entertainment culture. Rather than experiencing nature firsthand, many of us encounter it through screens.

 

Burning Desert | Horacio Devoto.

Past the charming Silverwood coffee shop, the hallway gallery is home to Burning Desert by Horacio Devoto. Born in Concepción del Uruguay, Argentina, and raised in Buenos Aires, Devoto is a photographer and printmaker now based in Minneapolis.

Burning Desert is a series of screen prints that maps the psychological terrain of living between collapsing ecosystems and accelerating technologies. The work is deeply rooted in process: Devoto layers photography, AI-generated imagery, and hand-printed surfaces to create dreamlike landscapes that evoke the anxiety of irreversible change. 

 

Image: Burning Desert #10. Screenprint with photography and digital imagery, 36" × 44", 2025

When I first encountered Burning Desert #10, I was blown away. My initial reaction was a mix of awe and euphoric wonder. To be fair, I didn't immediately realize I was looking at images of fire. Once I understood the context, I could feel the anxiety slowly manifest in my chest. The images have a mesmerizing, almost psychedelic quality. The color, contrast, and forms combine to create some of the most striking screen prints I've seen. The work belongs to a larger series, which can be viewed in person at Silverwood, and additional pieces are available on Devoto's website.

Devoto's adaptation of desert imagery is clever. Considering his upbringing in Argentina as an important anchor point for the exhibition, along with its political undertones and the realities of the current moment, these cinematic landscapes become powerful metaphors for both personal and political instability.

 

Installation view of Burning Desert #1 and Burning Desert #4. Photograph by Laura Laptsevitch.

 

Afterimage and Burning Desert show American dysphoria from very different perspectives. Someone who has already gotten the American Dream and someone who is working desperately hard to achieve it.

For those who by all accounts are living the dream, home ownership, the mailbox, and the white picket fence come with their new set of problems. What would you feel after getting everything you ever wanted? There is a deconstructed rocking chair fused with steel, titled “tipping point.” I think it’s a perfect analogy. Perhaps when you get that dream, you're afraid of it being taken away.

In Burning Desert, we see the instability of a world that feels perpetually on the brink. In Afterimage, we see the uneasy aftermath of getting everything we were told to want. The exhibitions suggest that the American Dream has become less a destination than a balancing act, caught between fear of never attaining it and fear of losing it once you do. As America approaches its 250th birthday, both exhibitions ask the same uncomfortable question: was the American Dream ever meant to make us feel secure?◼︎ 

Afterimage and Burning Desert are on view at Silverwood Park through July 31st. You can see more of Brighton McCormick's work on their website brightonmccormick.com, and see more of Horacio Devoto's work on his website horaciodevoto.com. Learn more about Silverwood's upcoming exhibitions on their website at www.threeriversparks.org/Art.

 

 

 

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This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.