Millennium Park, home of iconic pieces of public art such as “Cloud Gate” and the video gargoyles of Crown Fountain, will offer another installation this winter — a multicolored wall of ice, 95 feet long, with abstract patterns and shards of ice jutting out.
From afar, the 13-foot-tall sheets of brilliantly hued ice will look like a giant canvas of contemporary art. From close up, visitors can watch the pigments interact with the crystal ice structures, changing as parts of the wall evaporate, melt and freeze again.
Plans for the installation by Canadian artist Gordon Halloran, who was commissioned for similar work during the 2006 Turin Olympic Winter Games, will be unveiled Thursday. But in an interview Wednesday, he discussed the essential paradox of his artwork — keeping it intact while allowing nature to take its course.
The installation, called “Paintings Below Zero,” will open Feb. 1 and be on display through the month. It will be kept mostly frozen by chilled glycol running through aluminum panels that make up the core of the wall. Pigmented sheets of ice, created offsite, will be suspended from the metal panels. Over the course of the display, Halloran plans to bring in different plates of colored ice, keeping his painting evolving and fresh.
Visitors “are going to see ice in a way they’ve never seen it before,” said Halloran, 60, of Vancouver.
City officials estimate it will cost “a few hundred thousand dollars.” Several private and public entities will fund the project. The city says its portion of the funding and the state’s will come from the hotel tax.
“Paintings Below Zero,” the same name Halloran used for a similar work in Toronto earlier this year, also comes with free-standing pieces that look similar to mini-totem poles standing on a sheet of ice.
