Montreal artist lights up New York, London with interactive displays
Last Updated: Friday, October 10, 2008 | 5:18 PM ET
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Frequency and Volume allows people to tune radio frequencies with their movement. It is at the Barbican Art Gallery's The Curve. (Elliot Wyman/Barbican Art Gallery)Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer opened an exhibit in London's Barbican Gallery on Thursday and makes his U.S. public art debut later this month in New York's Madison Square Park.
Lozano-Hemmer's Frequency and Volume at the Barbican is his first solo U.K. exhibit at a public gallery.
The interactive exhibit includes 48 radios, representing the range of London's radio spectrum. The channels change constantly in line with the physical position of viewers, which are reflected as shadows on the wall.
The Montreal artist has filled the 90-metre arc of Barbican's Curve gallery with the light and sound installation. The London exhibit opened Thursday and runs until Jan. 18, 2009.
His work is also currently on display at the Haunch of Venison gallery in London.
Lozano-Hemmer is bringing his interactive light installation Pulse Park, which responds to the heart rates of individual viewers, to New York.
The installation sends pulses of light across the Oval Lawn of the Madison Square Park, which is next to the famous Flatiron building in Manhattan.
Lozano-Hemmer first created the Pulse series for the 2007 Venice Biennale and it was also a major attraction in Toronto during the 2007 Luminato Festival.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse was a big hit in Toronto in 2007. He'll take that show to New York. (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer)Works by the artist have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but this is the first time he has done a public installation in the U.S.
The work was enormously popular in Toronto, with viewers lining up to have their systolic and diastolic heart rates measured by one of two sensor sculptures and see the impact that has on the pulsing lights.
Born in 1967 in Mexico City and educated at Concordia University in Montreal, Lozano-Hemmer made his reputation in the mid-1990s with interactive public art.
His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999); the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001); the opening of the Basque Museum of Contemporary Arts Atrium (2002); the opening of the Yamaguchi Centre for Art and Media in Japan (2003) and the Asian Cultural Co-operation Forum (2006).
Pulse Park runs Oct. 24 to Nov. 17 in New York.
In November, his Under Scan, another major public work, will be displayed in London's Trafalgar Square.
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