BELGIUM AVENUE AND ATOMIUM
“At this age one can tell that neon signs have another side to them: another meaning in three-dimensionality. More than signs, objects in fact, that die in time. So, you now have the choice of two images…”
One image has the blurred movement of a child driving a toy car around a track in Brussels. The other image is entirely different but also the same. But not exactly the same: there’s enough difference there to tell the two apart – but this is where your eyes are tricked, and in trickles the illusion alluding to one image alone, with foreground and with background in Technicolor-terrific vision.
To the right of my picture now is a green bridge covered in cars and scaffolding. Below there’s a river dark and fast flowing, hiding the activities of earthy stick and stone. Along walks a man dressed in high top hat and trainers; there’s a fresh scar across his face running red and white and pink and blue down from his right ear through his top lip and ending against his chin. Between him and me is a pane of glass – he looks at me in frustration and moves his mouth whilst giving me a sign with his fingers.
Then there’s bright candyfloss before the sugar revolution. Hats made of edible cacophony spun and shone and done and gone across stage plateau and influx of helicopter visitor: more Technicolor fuller this time with whites and pinks and blues. Men are dressed high in tops, off white against the red adorned seats and suits: a procession or fashion parade.
So what is this object of sculpture and sound and cart winding up to the top? You have a choice of just two colours, either canary yellow or blood-orange: you’re then given a number “62” or 94 to take you along the river hovering your sites above the water along cables and wires. The underbelly is clarification and realisation, a definition of believability. Then there’s this climbing structure resonant of cultural adoration – something that’s new in its design, shiny in its affect – forward looking – and altogether celebratory of 1950’s health and wealth.
Now there’s scaffold upon scaffold, to understand urban renewal you have to understand the language of scaffold – it’s a new form of public sculpture.
