STILL LIFE
2014
Powder-coated aluminum & stainless steel sculpture
Client: City of Edmonton
Location: Grant McEwan LRT Station, Edmonton
Role: Artist
Collaborators: FLUXworx (fabricator); Blackwell Engineering (engineers)
A trompe l'oeil in which a field of sculptures combine into a single image.
Still Life, of course, isn’t still at all, but a playful take on the stuffiness and insularity of “high” art.
Still Life is a set of six sculptures located in the centre of the grassy space near the Grant MacEwan LRT station. Each individual sculpture is a whimsical, colourful addition to the Grant MacEwan LRT site, but when viewed together from a viewpoint looking through the final sculpture, a picture frame, all the pieces flatten into a classic trope of Western painting: the still life with fruit bowl.
The sculptures are spaced with enough distance between them that commuters or students can walk freely between them, entering and exiting the “picture”. In some ways, the sculptures are like a puzzle, one that invites pause in order for curious viewers to solve with their own positioning.
The project is titled “Still Life” as a play on the vitality of site. It capitalizes on the heavy pedestrian traffic surrounding the rail station by drawing passersby into the composition. People viewing the piece can flatten the a flat image by standing in front of the frame, and change the image by walking amongst the sculptures.