Illumination Project #8 "What is Real"
10 ft. x 150 ft. One sided painting / sculpture with canvas and steel.
What is Real was the darkest painting to date; it was printed and painted with images of death and disaster: suicides, plane crashes, skeletons, people falling to their demise from burning buildings and those who spent far to much time under water after dying. It was installed under the freeway as part of a full scale SRL show. Eventually one third of the painting was torn down by a large robotic machine and then ripped to shreds by the crowd. Since only half of the painting was destroyed at the SRL show we brought the remainder out to Nevada where we set up the 10 ft. x 90 ft. painting, flying it 12 feet off the ground. During the course of the week we sliced 1ft x 1ft squares out of the canvas, giving away the pieces to passers-by. Thus we continued the distribution of the canvas bits as occurred the SRL show and created windows through the canvas. These windows transformed the sculptures relationship with the world around it, allowing one to see through this wall, framing the world bit by bit. The holes also changed the wind flow dramatically, slowing down the movement and removing a great deal of the resistance. On Sunday evening the painting was lit on fire remotely with Meico's fireball launcher creating a momentary brush stroke of flame across the sky. |
