As part of its 2023 program, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has shown off four large-scale art pieces. The organizers say that the new sculptures by Kumkum Fernando, Vincent Leroy, Güvenc Ozel, and Maggie West are meant to bring "color, light, and different perspectives to the charged atmosphere" and act as "fresh, colorful, and architectural beacons that change the iconic Coachella landscape at different times of day and night."
The Messengers by Kumkum Fernando is made up of three massive figures that look like giant robots or action figures from far away. The Sri Lankan artist was influenced by the bright colors of South Asian art and building, especially Tibetan and Hindu temples, as well as by stories about gods and demons from his country. The figures that were made are between 65 and 80 feet tall and stand on pedestals with steps at the bottom where people can meet.
In his piece called "Molecular Cloud," French artist Vincent Leroy imagines molecular clouds as light, shiny, inflatable things that float above the festival field. As you get closer to the artwork, the ground, people, and sky start to show up in the installation's reflective surfaces. The creators call this a "phantasmagoric spectacle that plays with your perception and pulls you away from reality."
Güvenc Ozel, an artist and builder in Los Angeles, made Holoflux, a 60-foot-tall "hypermedia object" with flickering lights, projections, graphics, and changing color schemes. At night, the surfaces of the sculpture's spherical shapes that reflect light become pulsing light features, and real-time video is shown on the sculpture's walls to show how the event is going. "I consider myself a cyber-physical architect and a critical technologist," Ozel said about the plan. "Cyber-physical" means that the work is about both cyberspace and the real world, as well as how the two connect.
Another LA-based artist, Maggie West, has made what the organizers call "one of the world's largest 3D photography installations." It is made up of 20 steel structures with the artist's photos of flowers. The artwork, called Eden, is between 6 and 56 feet tall and has photographs of plants in both warm and cool tones. The high-resolution pictures are printed on vinyl sheets, and at night, they come to life when projections are mapped onto the sculptures to make a lively light show.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival 2023 takes place Friday, April 14 through Sunday, April 16 and Friday, April 21 through Sunday, April 23.
Jean Dubreil
| ArtMajeur Magazine