Land scape
Stefan Lesueur
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
Design Week Portland. The installation was part of a larger event called“ Revolution in the Landscape: Re-Experience Halprin’ s Fountains” that was organized by the Society for Experiential Graphic Design in Portland. The event was set as a way to celebrate a sequence of fountains built in downtown Portland in the seventies by Lawrence Halprin. The fountains were designed to mimic the path of a mountain stream, and the general goal was to bring back natural space and form into the urban setting. Luckily enough, I was asked to participate with my own installation along one of the walkways between the two southernmost fountains, and I proceeded to create a work with string. As always, it will be easier to see through the photographs, but I picked out a branch from each tree lining the walkway and created“ walls” of string which ran along the length of the branches, and from the branches to the ground. The goal of the project was to create an interruption for people in the middle of an otherwise straight path: to direct people to pause and look up along the string to see the trees and study their form. Now, of course, I can’ t say that everyone had this literal experience, but again, the point is to start a conversation. I spend much of my time wondering about the motion and form of my surroundings and wish to translate that in some way. The Halprin installation provided a great opportunity to do so.
Yes, I would hope so. Again, that’ s part of the idea of creating a conversation. Though I have my own designs with my work, I hope for people to pull out their own perspective from it and share it. Of course, Obscura has a rather direct call for self-reflection, but it’ s interesting to consider how Landscapes for Richter does it on a