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FreelandBuck's new Washington Metro art installation invites viewers to an engrossing play on perspective

2024-04-23T13:24:00-04:00

FreelandBuck has released images of a recent art installation for the Washington Metro Area Transit Agency (WMATA) in Washington, D.C. Staged as an optical illusion, their new piece titled ‘Tunnel Vision’ works by projecting an image of a metro station over three intersecting aluminum cones that are suspended from the ceiling in the lobby of the organization’s new Alexandria, Virginia, offices.

Image courtesy FreelandBuck and WMATA

The sculpture's grid pattern and convex geometry center a 3D image of an iconic coffered station designed by Harry Weese in the viewer’s vision field, creating the effect of watching a metro train approach while standing on the platform. The firm says, "The piece suggests both realism and familiarity, inciting curiosity for passersby to come take a closer look."

Image courtesy FreelandBuck and WMATA

Brennan Buck, the firm's principal and co-founder, told the Washingtonian magazine recently, "We thought it was just a real...

Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama debuts 'Purple Hibiscus' at the Barbican, a reference to the site's material history

2024-04-12T16:33:00-04:00

The Barbican has debuted a new large-scale public art installation from Ghanaian-born artist Ibrahim Mahama.

His site-specific piece Purple Hibiscus, named in reference to the 2003 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is installed on the facade of the Barbican’s central Lakeside Terrace. It uses approximately 21,500 square feet of fuschia-hued cloth that contrasts dramatically with the rough concrete exterior and overcast London sky.

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

Mahama created the piece in collaboration with artisans from his Red Clay Studio and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in the city of Tamale, Ghana. It references the site's past history as the epicenter of the "rag trade" in Central London before World War II. Together, both the piece and architecture serve as a metaphor for the "power of labor."

Installation view, 'Ibrahim Mahama: Purple Hibiscus.' Image: © Dion Barrett / Barbican Centre

The artist describes...

Artist Mary Miss files suit to stop demolition of outdoor installation at Des Moines Art Center

2024-04-09T17:42:00-04:00

Artist Mary Miss has filed a lawsuit in an ongoing dispute over the planned demolition of her outdoor installation Greenwood Pond: Double Site (1996) at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa.

A district court subsequently decided to issue a temporary restraining order against the institution’s plans, which were to be enacted on April 8th of this year.

Greenwood Pond-Double Site, Des Moines, IA, 1996. Photo © Mary Miss courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Miss, who is considered a leading figure of the Land Art movement, filed the legal challenge after The Cultural Landscape Foundation divulged the Art Center’s “secret plans” to deconstruct and remove the installation from its grounds over the deterioration of its materials and presumed adversity of potential repairs.

Greenwood Pond-Double Site, Des Moines, IA, Dec. 2023. Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Miss is alleging a breach of contract as part of the suit, citing a 1994 agreement and seeking damages through a readi...

Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut

2022-08-26T17:51:00-04:00

The long-awaited public opening of land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental earthwork City is just around the corner, and the Triple Aught Foundation, the group which manages its remote Lincoln County, Nevada site, has shared some amazing new photos that offer a sense of the scale and stasis of the massive sculpture which has taken 52 years and another $40 million to finish.

City © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex One and Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Critic Dave Hickey recently described it as "a gracious intervention in the desert...composed and complete."

LACMA Director Michael Govan reflected on its realization, stating: "Over the years I would sometimes compare Michael Heizer's City project to some of the most important ancient monuments and cities. But now I only compare it to itself. It's an artwor...

Michael Heizer’s land art masterpiece 'City' finally sets an opening date

2022-08-22T10:00:00-04:00

City, a vast complex of outdoor structures and landmasses the Land artist Michael Heizer began constructing in the desert of Nevada in 1970, will finally begin welcoming public visitors next month. The site’s opening on 2 September, more than 50 years after work at the site began, marks the fulfillment of Heizer’s most ambitious and career-defining project.

Get ready to weep (assuming you are among the select art tourists willing to travel to the site-specific installation, as Heizer intended): The 50-year saga surrounding the National Mall-sized sculpture is over, and the Triple Aught Foundation, which manages the site, will begin accepting up to six visitors a day in an outcome that has at times seemed impossible.

Heizer's masterpiece has been the subject of an Obama-era protective designation (a measure first proposed by the late Senator Harry Reid) and later the failed Trump Administration attempt to open up the 740,000-acre tract to mining and development. Plans were originally for the earthwork to be made public in 2020. LACMA director Michael Govan says it is "an artwork aware of our primal impulses to build and organize space."

As the artist, who began the piece in 1970, told the Los Angeles Times in 2012: "The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for ins...

The contemporary site-specific art exhibition, Desert X, returns to Coachella Valley

2019-02-14T12:41:00-05:00

Desert X, the enormous site-specific art exhibition set across the Coachella Valley, has returned this weekend for its second edition. Run by a nonprofit organization that includes artist Ed Ruscha on its board, the 2019 biennial features 18 works that respond to the desert's history and embrace a "range of ecological, environmental and social issues that have been driving conversations about our role in the anthropocene," says artistic director Neville Wakefield.

Revolutions by Nancy Baker Cahill. Photo by Lance Garber.

After an incredibly successful inaugural run in 2017, the biennial has expanded its programming this year to include film and augmented reality projects, such as Nancy Baker Cahill's Revolutions and Margins of Error, both of which bring colorful animations to the Valley's windmill farms and the Salton Sea, respectively, through the use of the 4th Wall app. Fifty miles away in Palm Springs, John Gerrard, the Irish artist known for his digital simulations, has brought...

SHED's “Ghost Cabin” honors a historic Seattle site with a playful mystery

2018-10-17T14:15:00-04:00

SHED Architecture & Design's Ghost Cabin isn't exactly a haunted house like its name suggests. The new courtyard art installation pays tribute to a site dubbed “Grandma's House” in the Chophouse Row development in Seattle's Capitol Hill. While building the Chophouse Row in 2013, contractors unearthed the mysterious site, which revealed the foundation of a small house that was once part of a late 19th-century pioneer settlement. The contractors then nicknamed the structure “Grandma's House” because whenever the Chophouse Row ran into construction delays, they would joke that “Grandma's ghost” had returned to slow down their progress.

In 2017, Chophouse Row owner and developer Liz Dunn commissioned an art installation for the courtyard above Grandma's House that had to create a sense of community as well as respect the site's history.

Photo: Rafael Soldi.

In response to that, SHED proposed the Ghost Cabin, whose name was inspired by the Grandma's House story. While designing the artw...

Labics redevelops former bus depot into “City of Sun” in Rome

2018-02-06T19:40:00-05:00

After winning the Municipality of Rome's invite-only competition in 2007, architects Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori of Labics revitalized a former bus depot at the edge of town into a mixed-use complex called the Città del Sole, or “City of Sun”. Working with local public transit authority ATAC, the Municipality of Rome sought design proposals that would redevelop a number of transit depots in the city. Labics completed City of Sun in 2016.

Photo: Marco Cappelletti.

In designing the 17,300 sq.m. project, Labics wanted to create a porous urban center for the local community that would also enhance the neighborhood's identity.

Photo: Marco Cappelletti.

The multi-level complex has commercial spaces and a public library at ground level, offices on the first floor, and then public spaces on the next level.

Three buildings are suspended above the public spaces. One of the buildings provides additional office space, while the ot...

Artist Rachel Whiteread creates two "ghost" cabins in the desert outside of Los Angeles

2017-07-25T12:15:00-04:00

Rachel Whiteread is known for her architecturally-relevant art practice, in particular her casts of the inside of buildings. One such sculpture, a cast of a Victorian townhouse, helped secure her the Turner Prize, making her the first woman to ever win the illustrious award.

The London-based artist has reprised this strategy for two installations in the California High Desert, which are featured in WSJ. Magazine. Located near Joshua Tree National Park, her concrete sculptures reveal the negative space of small cabins from the 1950s that had been left in the desert.

Photography by Iwan Baan for WSJ. Magazine

These aren’t the only sculptures to have recently touched down in the arid landscape outside of Los Angeles. A slew of artists, including Doug Aitken, gathered together a couple months ago to create Desert X, which was something of a festival of contemporary, site-specific works.

Waukegan, IL: future home of the Lucas Museum?

2016-05-05T16:02:00-04:00

With the future of a Lucas Museum on Chicago's lakefront in doubt, the city of Waukegan is asking the organizers to look a little to the north. Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley reached out to Mellody Hobson, a Chicago financial executive and the wife of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, about locating the proposed museum featuring digital, traditional and narrative art on Waukegan's lakefront, a city spokesman said on Wednesday.

After a shake-up Tuesday wherein Chicago-based Friends of the Parks (which was taking a 30-day break from suing to prevent the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art from being built) announced that it wasn't going to budge on its anti-LMNA position, George Lucas announced that he was seriously considering other locations. According to the Chicago Tribune Lucas' wife, Mellody Hobson, noted that "this process has been co-opted and hijacked by a small special interest group." On Thursday, The Chicago Tribune reported that Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked his Law Department Wednesday afternoon to ask a federal appeals court to reject the Friends of the Parks case before it is tried. Could the force be with the industrial shoreline of Waukegan, Illinois, population 90K?

You can conquer the box-office, but stakeholder groups are a whole different echelon:

Feast your eyes on Do Ho Suh's immersive home installations in this short film

2015-05-29T14:05:00-04:00

Seoul-based cinematographer and photographer Nils Clauss put together a new film highlighting the works of esteemed sculptor and installation artist Do Ho Suh. Suh's site-specific pieces play with the boundaries of identity and revolve around the physical and metaphorical malleability of space, whether that's captivating viewers into monochromatic structures made of thin translucent fabrics or putting them on edge with houses teetering off the roof of a building.

Clauss' mini film highlights Suh's "Perfect Home" exhibition at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan from 2012-2013.

Spare a few minutes and check out the video below.

INsite by Luftwerk turns Mies' Farnsworth House inside-out with light and sound

2014-05-15T13:23:00-04:00

Whether you're a diehard Miesian fan or could care less about the modernist architecture canon, we've heard of ol' Farnsworth time and time again since its completion in 1951 in Plano, Illinois. But Chicago-based artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero of Luftwerk want the public to see the historic Farnsworth House in a whole new light — literally — with their digital installation project called INsite.

INsite highlights the house's characteristic clean lines through site-specific digital video projections and original music compositions, thus rendering it into a new structure of light, sound, and space. In addition to recent preservation efforts to protect the Farnsworth from more floodwater damage in the future, INsite could help revive public interest in an eye-catching way that is suitable for these tech-friendly times.

Illuminating modern architecture landmarks is nothing new for Gallero and Bachmaier, who have collaborated with video designer and programmer Liviu Pasare and co...

First annual LAMP design challenge/exhibition coming in October

2013-09-11T14:18:00-04:00

This will be an opportunity for those already engaged with architecture to re-imagine their talents in more conceptual explorations and a way for the public to engage with architecture in a format they may have never experienced.

Annika Hagen, Nicole Fox and Tyler Greentree of LAMP (Lighting Architecture Movement Project) from Vancouver, BC will be hosting their first annual LAMP event--a live design installation exhibition and creative challenge--on Thursday, Oct. 3 at the Woodwards Atrium.

LAMP invited four local architectural designers to participate in this one-night gala event. Bryn Davidson, Jorge Siemsen, Oliver Neumann + Cristian Schmitt, and Simon Montgomery were each given a thematic word to reinterpret and lighting packages to incorporate into their projects, and were assigned site-specific areas within the Woodwards Atrium. Other than that, they have complete freedom over their projects. The designers were given three months to create their pieces and have two days to install them in the Atrium. Then on the evening of Oct. 3, the results will be on display for the public to interact with and experience.

You can click here to purchase tickets, watch interviews with the designers, and more.

‘Thresholds’ marks the unmarked at Kent cemetery

2013-09-05T14:20:00-04:00

“It is amazing to realize you could walk around the site not knowing if there is a body underneath you,” Nelson said. “How do you commemorate that?”

Of the approximately 200 people buried at Saar Pioneer Cemetery, there are 89 unmarked graves, each unable to inform visitors of their presence and the role they played in Kent history. Collaborative artists Frances Nelson and Bradly Gunn seek to mark the unmarked by creating a series “thresholds” to walk under and pass through, as an acknowledgement of the final resting place of Kent’s founding pioneers.

THRESHOLDS is generously supported by 4Culture’s Site Specific Program and the University of Washington’s College of Built Environment’s Digital Fabrication Lab, with additional support from McLendon Hardware, Dunn Lumber and Miller Paint Co.