Cloud
CLOUD is an interactive sculpture re-imagining the potential of everyday objects to create a dazzling, collaborative experience. Viewers interact with CLOUD by working as an impromptu collective to animate ‘lightning’ on the surface of the piece, becoming unwitting performers and puppeteers. The outward appearance of the sculpture is light and delicate, but as you move beneath the canopy of light bulbs CLOUD reveals her substructure: hand-bent steel and utilitarian electronics. Subsequently the inner and outer spheres of the artwork pose different dynamics, inviting both participation + contemplation, spectacle + speculation, collective + subjective, harmony + chaos.
Simple, bright, and playful, CLOUD is a barometer of social interaction between strangers. In every country she visits, viewers interact with CLOUD differently, creating subtle commentaries about the surrounding cultural climate. On a symbolic level, however, CLOUD relies on the universal language of environmental imagery – despite language barriers, distance, and differences, rain clouds are understood by people everywhere. Characterized by upturned faces and glittering eyes, viewers engage with the work long after all her secrets have been revealed.
This edition of CLOUD was commissioned by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art for Art Experiment 2013 (Moscow).
The Artists
Caitlind r.c. Brown + Wayne Garrett are Canadian artists exploring the interspace between light + darkness, nature + culture, individual + collective. Beckoning viewers with participatory contexts and novel materials, their projects invite strangers to share in experiential moments, sometimes prompting unwitting collaborations. Focusing on art in public spaces, the duo frequently utilizes mass-produced objects as a reference to cities as an immeasurable mass of materials, people, and situations. By building relationships between the mundane and the magical, the artists hope to evoke a renewed understanding of the everyday through a critical shift in perspective.
Previous works have appeared at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Japan Alps Art Festival (Omachi, Japan), Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, USA), Pera Museum (Istanbul, Turkey), GLOW Forum of Art + Architecture (Eindhoven, Netherlands), The National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), and others. They are currently working on their first long-term public artworks in their hometown of Calgary, Canada.
