Best of 2014: Top 10 Art Installations
It was another great year for installations as artists from all over the world brought out their best, most immersive work. While last year we saw Do Ho Suh’s fabric replica of a house within a house and, Ai Wei Wei’s 3,000 plus stacked bicycles and Yayoi Kusama’s LEDs and mirrored filled room, this year we saw mud, tape and crystals being used.
Of course, the installation that topped them all was Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by Paul Cummunis—888,246 handmade poppies surrounding the Tower of London in one of the most beautifully symbolic works we’ve ever seen. Now enjoy our list of the top 10 most amazing installations in 2014.
Top Pieces of Installation Art in 2014
Owl Eyes by Artur Bordalo
Portuguese street artist Artur Bordalo, aka Bordalo II, uses mixed media to create his own interpretations of the urban landscape and environment. He often composes his works using various found items that he merges together into beautiful forms. In that sense, his street art is unique because it appears slightly three-dimensional and is presented in surprisingly tactile formations. Recently, Bordalo II was invited to produce an installation as part of WOOL, an urban art festival in Covilh, Portugal. It took him a little more than one week to create Owl Eyes, a collaged owl composed of found trash and recycled materials. Read more, here.
Magic Carpets by Miguel Chevalier
Magic Carpets is an elaborate installation by Miguel Chevalier in which the French artist transformed a former church space into a mesmerizing spectacle of sound and lights. He used digital technology to project a variety of multicolored light patterns and mosaics, inspired by Islamic art, across the floor. As viewers walked throughout the space, the interactive designs adjusted and changed in unpredictable movements to create a direct dialogue between individuals and the surrounding space. Read more, here.
Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2 by Willam Forsythe
At Brighton Festival, an annual arts festival in England, one of the world’s most innovative choreographers, William Forsythe, brought out a fun installation that made visitors unintentionally dance. Hundreds of delicate pendulums, swinging in timed sequences, dangled from an old municipal market space. Visitors were welcome to walk through the installation but they had to avoid touching the pendulums. Suddenly, they became dancers as their strides and side-steps produced a lively choreography! Read more, here.
Tape Paris by Numen/For Use
For the group exhibition Inside at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, design collective Numen/For Use–consisting of Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler, and Nikola Radeljkovic–used the everyday material of scotch tape to create an extraordinary, sculptural tunnel that stretches across the top of the entrance hall like a web or the branches of a strange tree. Titled Tape Paris, the installation is the latest iteration of the group’s Tape series, which has brought similar tape structures to Tokyo, Melbourne, Frankfurt, and other cities across the globe. Read more, here.
Dazzlingly Psychedelic Floor Installations by Suzan Drummen
Dutch artist Suzan Drummen is known for her dazzling and colorful designs that spread across the floor in stunning geometric displays. Drummen’s installations are made from crystal, chrome-plated metal, precious stones, mirrors, and optical glass. While they appear clean and orderly from afar, the many small elements that make up each piece become disorienting when viewed up close. Symmetrical circles and psychedelic patterns still serve as the basis of the glittering floor designs, but Drummen’s recent works display a striking new density, with each design packed with more colorful details than ever before. Read more, here.
Reflection / Kolonihavehus by Tom Fruin
Check out those rainbow reflections! For this year’s DUMBO Arts Festival, artist Tom Fruin and performance duo CoreAct presented a collaborative project called Reflection / Kolonihavehus in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Fruin’s colorful plexiglass house, called Kolonihavehus, was on display. In previous years, the outdoor sculpture had been shown throughout Europe, such as in Sweden, Denmark, Austria and the Czech Republic. Read more, here.
Yamatane by Yusuke Asai
Japanese artist Yusuke Asai uses pigmented earth found in local mud and sand to paint intricate, site-specific murals that sprawl across entire walls, ceilings, and floors. The Tokyo-born painter has decorated classrooms in Bihar and Maharashtra, India in the past, but his new exhibit yamatane (“mountain seed”) at the Rice Gallery in Houston, Texas marked his US debut. Read more, here.
LIGHT is TIME by Tsuyoshi Tane (of DGT Architects) and CITIZEN
Renowned Japanese watch manufacturer CITIZEN recently unveiled a stunning installation called LIGHT is TIME at Milan Design Week. Displayed in the Triennale di Milano exhibition hall, the spectacular installation consists of 80,000 main plates (the structural bases of watches) suspended from 4,200 metal threads hooked to the ceiling. The result is a truly one-of-a-kind experience for viewers, who are enveloped in a cloud of refracting light, time frozen around them like thousands of golden rain drops. Read more, here.
Not Red But Green by Per Kristian Nygard
With grass so lusciously green, it’s almost hard to believe that this artwork existed indoors! Earlier this year, Norway-based creative Per Kristian Nygrd filled the space of the Noplace gallery in Oslo with a rolling lawn that cascaded from nearly a ceiling-height and ended at the edge of a doorway. It was titled Not Red But Green and it brought the outdoors inside. Nygrd’s incredible piece looks especially tranquil set against the bright white walls. Read more, here.
Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by Paul Cummins
Surrounding the Tower of London were 888,246 handmade poppies, each representing a British and Commonwealth person who died during World War One. The first poppy was planted on August 5th, the first day of Britain’s full participation in the war, and the last poppy was planted on Armistice Day, November 11th. The stunning installation covered 16 acres, which is roughly equivalent to 250 tennis courts or 16 soccer fields. The clay models were handmade under artist Paul Cummins and the setting was designed by Tom Piper. Read more, here.
Next: Best of 2013