[SpongeG]

did anyone catch the article in the west ender?

http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals/uploads/westender/.DIR288/20070809081650Aug9_cover.jpg

[Holden West]

Short answer: yes. And a damn good one too, IMO.

The title is "Device to root out evil (http://www.vancouverbiennale.com/sculptures_page.php?sculptureID=17)" and it's by Dennis Oppenheim and it was part of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale.

Media: Glass, steel, aluminum. Size: 609 cm x 671 cm x 274 cm (240” x 264” x 108”). Weight: 1,588 kg (3,500 lbs).

Dennis Oppenheim: Born in Electric City Washington in 1938, Dennis Oppenheim has had a recognized career as a conceptual artist working in sculpture, photography, film and video since the 1970s. Oppenheim’s conceptual work first came to realization through the use of film and video, performance and the body and he was one of the avant-garde artists of the 70’s. Residing in New York City, Oppenheim continues to exhibit internationally in galleries such as the Tate Gallery in London and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. He also receives numerous commissions. http://www.home.earthlink.net/%7Edennisoppenheim. (http://www.home.earthlink.net/%7Edennisoppenheim)

Here's a picture I took of it last year:


http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j142/Theoldvictorian/sculpture_panorama.jpg

[The Great Scaper]

That took me a while to figure out what the heck I was looking at. Then I realized it was a house upside down! hahahaha....crazy!!!

Holden is the Art Man....so there you have it!!! :D

[Holden West]

Naw, I just saw it last year and was intrigued enough to look it up. There were some pretty cool sculptures on display downtown that summer.

It's a great idea. Victoria should have an sculpture Biennale.

BTW...umm...it's not a house.

[The Great Scaper]

The House of God! heheehe

Good recovery hey!

Sorry, Just saw it's a church :D

[Holden West]

There's some great shots of it on Flickr (http://flickr.com/search/?q=Device%20to%20root%20out%20evil&w=all).

[vid]

Something like that here would be seen as a waste of money, and Billy Bob would likely have driven his pick up through by now, ah tell ya hwut.

Enjoy it for me. :)

[clooless]

I like it.

I am just surprised it isn't covered in graffiti. :(

[SpongeG]

heres the article

Love it or loathe it, park board members and local art enthusiasts want the city to acquire more large sculptures and installations — on

display where everyone has no choice but to see them.

When a church pivots upside down on its steeple, balancing on a tilt for thousands of passersby, chances are someone’s going to have an opinion. Especially if it’s presented as a work of art.

Device to Root Out Evil, by New York sculptor Dennis Oppenheim, was installed in Coal Harbour’s Harbour Green waterfront park last year, after the president of California’s Stanford University rejected it from his campus, fearing the sight of an inverted church would incite religious controversy.

Crafted from aluminum, with shingles made of red glass and windows of blue glass, Device inspires as much resentment as admiration: It’s a thing of great beauty. It’s sacrilegious. It’s really bad feng shui, giving off negative energy to the pleasant park. It’s wasting all that precious urban space, where a playground would be of greater use.

Allan De Genova has heard them all.

“There is controversy right now — I’ve talked to a number of Asians that have said the feng shui of an upside-down church is all off, and that it gives off bad energy,” says De Genova, a commissioner with the Vancouver Park Board for 15 years. “Others have said they fell in love with it, that it’s the most creative piece they’ve ever seen and they wish they could afford to purchase it. I’ve heard other people say, ‘Gee, we’d rather see a nice play area in that greenspace — let’s get rid of the church’... There’ll always be controversy where there is public art.”

De Genova and his park board colleagues may have to brace themselves for even more controversy, with a proposal to be put forward to the public this fall. Two years ago, the 2005-2007 Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, an organization founded by art curator and gallery owner Barrie Mowatt, erected 26 loaned sculptures downtown, in Coal Harbour, and on beaches bordering English Bay. Now the Biennale has asked that four pieces stay in Vancouver on a permanent (30-year) loan. It’s up to the public to respond: barring a prolonged strike, the parks board will build display boards near each statue, offering residents the opportunity to write their opinions, and providing information on upcoming open houses and forums surrounding the project. By fall, about 15,000 Kitsilano and West End residents should expect to see information flyers at their doorsteps.

The Biennale is proposing that King and Queen, Canadian sculptor Sorel Etrog’s tall sitting figures, now installed at Coal Harbour’s Harbour Green, be moved to Sunset Beach; and that 217.5 Arcs X 13 (popularly referred to as “whale bones” or “whale carcass”), by French sculptor Bernar Venet, be relocated from Morton Triangle (next to English Bay) to Sunset Beach. The Biennale also asks that Echoes, artist Michel Goulet’s silver chairs erected on the sand at Sunset Beach, move to a small greenspace on Kitsilano Beach, in front of Watermark restaurant. Finally, the Biennale proposes that Device to Root Out Evil stay at its site at Harbour Green.

Once all the public consultation is complete, park board commissioners hope to vote upon it by late fall, and perhaps relocate the pieces by spring.

“It’s important we have a public process, because at the end of the day, who am I to decide for the community?” says De Genova.

Indeed, who has the authority to decide on what to introduce as public art? Ever the politician, De Genova stresses the city and park board’s diplomatic approach, working with an arts-and-culture committee and pursuing public consultation with the Biennale and the public-art program — a separate project altogether.

But for longtime art gallery owner Mowatt, who runs West Georgia Street’s Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, judgment is much more specialized.

“The people who decide on public art are the same people who decided the Eiffel Tower was a great architectural structure, the same people who decided that Michelangelo and his great works were also important at the time,” says Mowatt. “Great works of art and architecture are rarely decided upon by the masses, but by someone who has a passion and has complete understanding of that part of the world.”

De Genova first met Mowatt in 1993, when the gallery owner approached the parks board with the concept of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, and its first program, Open Spaces 2005/2006, which installed the 26 sculptures around the West End and Westside, outside the auspices of the city’s public art program and at no charge to Vancouver taxpayers.Many were sold by Christie’s Auction House last spring, a mark of the success of the Biennale. San Diego’s Port public-art program rented two pieces: Vancouver’s Walking Figures, artist Magdalena Abakanowicz’s bronze headless figures that once stood in Queen Elizabeth Park; and Engagement (known as the “gigantic engagement rings”), which stood in the grassy public area at English Bay beach.

De Genova makes no secret of his enthusiasm for the sculptures. “[The park board] could never afford to go out and spend multi-millions for these pieces, from world-renowned artists on the world stage, to come here,” he says. “The public pays nothing to enjoy the pieces — or not, if that’s the case.”

For Mowatt, the project is all about building a civic identity for Vancouver that he hopes will make an imprint in the global imagination.

“The Jazz festival in Montreal and film festival in Toronto — each of these cities are identified by major cultural events,” Mowatt says. “Calgary even has the stampede, but Vancouver doesn’t have anything like that, that can be clearly identified. So, when you say ‘Vancouver,’ [people around the world] say, ‘Oh, I really enjoyed it; it’s a great, livable city.’

“Well, great livable cities are all about great public art and great culture.”

http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals/uploads/westender/.DIR288/ARTS_church_Aug_9_070809.jpg
Clockwise from top: Device to Root Out Evil, at Coal Harbour’s Harbour Green; King and Queen, also at Harbour Green; 217.5 Arcs X 13, next to English Bay; and Echoes, at Sunset Beach.


http://www.westender.com/

[bugsy]

I love public art. That particular piece is abit tacky though.

[SpongeG]

i love that piece

[vitc]

Love it also - and yes it is art!

[deasine]

The coming art gallery should have public art pieces like that.