Katharina Grosse won the competition for the artistic design for the infrastructure area of Olskroken with bLINK, a proposal that creates an experience in which a fictional giant spotlight sends pink light to the surroundings. The areas hit by the beam of light are coloured in pink; the railway bridge, the walkways, the bicycle paths and the lawn. In the middle of the light, a gigantic boulder seems to have landed on top of the new bridge at Olskroken; a 14x11x10 meter large sculpture that transforms the city’s skyline.
Through bLINK, the artist Katharina Grosse invites the viewer to imagine a giant spotlight directing a pink light beam towards the ground. All the surfaces that are fictitiously hit by the cone of light are coloured pink: railway bridge, trusses, ground surfaces, footpaths and cycle paths. In the middle of the light, a giant boulder, as big as a three-story building, seems to have landed on the E 6.
bLINK links time, movement and space and adds something entirely unexpected and theatrical to the place. In its proportions the sculpture refers to Skansen Lejonet, the defensive rampart that for several centuries has looked out over a landscape in transformation. The work with bLINK has placed great demands on construction and safety because it is the first time in Sweden that a work of art has been integrated into a railway facility. This is one of several works of art in Västlänken, all of which have their starting point in the artistic vision Kronotopia – a concept that connects to Gothenburg and the shared history of the citizens of Gothenburg.
About Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany) lives and works in Germany as an artist and professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she studied. She has contributed to expand the boundaries of contemporary painting and today her large-scale installations are recognized as pioneer works. With strong colors that spill out across the environments, she invites the visitor to be surrounded by atmospheres, instead of standing next to them as a viewer. Grosse bases her interventions in an attentive observation of the context where they will be implemented, and takes into account questions such as the activation of spaces and the perceptual relations between the artwork and its audiences. Her work conveys an invitation to intensify our perception, to enhance the awareness of the environment we are in and to activate the visionary potential of our imagination.
Grosse is represented in the collections of Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York or Magasin III in Stockholm, among others. In Sweden, she is also known for her artistic intervention in the station building in Vara.
Ann Magnusson (Head curator), Lotta Mossum, Vera Halla (Assistant)
West Link: Kronotopia
Västlänken ( The West Link) is one of the Västra Götaland region’s largest construction projects of all time and will connect the city and region with a new underground train connection through central Gothenburg and new train stations that relieve the Central Station. New station environments, ramps, bridges and neighbouring urban environments will shape people’s living environments for a long time to come. Construction is scheduled to start in 2018, with the first trains rolling down the tunnel in 2026.
The artists participating in the competition have an exceptional opportunity to influence the design of the underground rooms at an early stage.
bLINK is commissioned by the Swedish Transport Administration and Public Art Agency Sweden.
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