top of page

LIKE OIL AND WATER
FREEZE ANCHORAGE EXHIBITION
Anchorage, Alaska

OUTDOOR EXHIBITION

Freeze Anchorage was an outdoor exhibition of Art and Architecture organized by the Alaska Design Forum, the International Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Anchorage Museum.  The theme of the exhibition was Snow and Light and the idea was that each architect would collaborate with an artist of their choosing to participate in the outdoor winter exhibition.  CK Architecture collaborated with Lita Albuquerque and Buro Happold.

LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Site Plan
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View
APPROACH

We are interested in an art of experience.  What happens in our perception when confronted by an all-white field traversed by a single black line. The white field elevated to table height, and becoming black ice table.  The black oil floating within reflects the northern sky.  Oil and water, together yet apart, forming an ever-changing mirror image.  Ancient life compressed into oil floating atop a container of frozen water, a magic emulsion mixed with light to glow in the colors of the rainbow.  A black-ice table attracting visitors to its edges by force of its content’s continuously changing play of color and reflection.

We are proposing to create out of ice, snow and light, an eighty-five feet long by forty-five inch wide table, filled with black oil and water which would dissect our entire site and be positioned in the precise direction of the sun the exact moment of the fifty-year anniversary of Alaska’s statehood.

 

Visually the piece will be a minimalist black linear sculpture dissecting the all white square site.  It will be interactive, both in the interaction of materials between the water and oil in the table as well as in the viewers’ interaction with it as they come upon it.  We will use blue light underneath the table to illuminate the snow on the ground and to make it appear to be floating in space.

 

When taken in the context of the cosmos, our planet itself is one giant clock, at any point of the planet, the shadows measure the rotation of the earth around the sun, giving us a timetable, a notion of where we stand in the trajectory of space and time.

 

While our interest is mainly aesthetic, we oriented the table to reflect the precise direction of the sun on “One Minute Past Noon, January 3rd 2009” the exact moment of the 50-year anniversary of the State of Alaska.  The table is the symbol of people gathering, meeting each other, of coming together, of community, a meeting of the minds. Yet just like its materials: oil and water, the table does not invite to sit at it and become one with it. Its content simultaneously attracts and rejects.

LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View

Oil is compressed and liquefied life, the fossilized remains of dead plants and animals of millions of years ago.  By creating a vessel of frozen water from the present to carry a precious liquid created millions of years ago, the black-ice table reveals yet another perceptual paradox: We are attracted by water, yet cannot access it because it is frozen, we are rejected by black oil, but taken by the beauty of the colors it forms when mixed with water and light.

 

Graphically, the black line on white field reminds of Malevich’s Black Square, a minimalist sculpture in the middle of the space, black and white, black oil, white snow, a three-dimensional Malevich. 

 

The concept of the table was inspired by art history, Brancusi’s table in Romania, as well as the Millennium Table that was erected from Paris to Nice to celebrate people united by a common goal.  We liked the idea of a long table, one to which people would gather yet there are no seats, instead of social interaction over food, there are elements in there, oil and water that are changing and not mixing, leaving the viewer with a question, a friction, yet grounded in time and space. 

LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Detail View

How can we come together when in fact we do not mix?

Can we come to experience beauty, despite our “not mixing”?

Can Art be a transcending factor?

Are we aware how connected we are to our planet and to our planet rotating in the vast solar system within our galaxy?

 

There are multiple reasons why we chose this particular and precise geometry.  First it was inspired by aerial perspective, when seen from above, this long object positioned at the exact angle of the sun on January 3, 2009 a few minutes before noon, acts like the hands of a giant sundial; from the ground, one gets the subliminal sensation of connecting to forces greater than can be perceived. 

The table’s geometry and proportions were very carefully chosen to instill in the viewer a sense of procession and meditation. There is a sense of linearity that one experiences by walking the table’s eighty-five foot length as if one has to “read” this table, and what is being read is “a vessel of frozen water from the present carrying a precious liquid created millions of years ago.”   A liquid we consider common is presented as something precious on a table in a middle of a white field that one is compelled to walk toward.

 

We are presently experimenting with the notion of light during the day and how the interaction of oil and water creates a shimmering light in the color of rainbows.  The two liquids together will be changing over time as well as reflect the sky.

 

The white field pristine and untouched at the outset will be stained and deformed by the footsteps of the visitors to the table.  Its canvas will form a field of records and traces of numerous encounters of the beholder and its subject.  These traces will be photographically recorded at equal intervals and their frequency and density patterns will speak of the nature of the visitor’s encounters with the black-ice table

LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. View of Opening
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. View of Opening
LIKE OIL AND WATER FREEZE ANCHORAGE INSTALLATION. Liquid Experiments

LIKE OIL AND WATER: FREEZE ANCHORAGE

Scope: Outdoor Art Installation

CK Architecture in collaboration with Lita Albuquerque and Buero Happold

Organizers: Alaska Design Forum, International Gallery of Contemporary Art, The Anchorage Museum Year: 2009

Project Type: art

bottom of page