About the Art
Shelter is part of a series of works created by Erwin Redl to create a specific corporeal sense of place. The tall metal rods are carefully positioned to allow the viewer to investigate the material’s inherent properties as well as the artwork’s interplay with the ephemeral dynamics of nature such as light and wind. The shadows cast by the rods onto the ground change gradually throughout the day and year and are also impacted by the seasonally changing natural landscape or a blanket of white snow. The hard metal is placed in the rigid shape of a square, juxtaposing it with the organic nature of the surrounding landscape and curvilinear walkway. The tops of the rods are visible to drivers and pedestrians traversing this busy intersection, hinting to what might be just beyond the bushes. Located at the corner of the Lane Avenue Gardens of the Chadwick Arboretum, this sculpture becomes part of a lovely diversion into nature.
The work is located on a former cow pasture, with a tunnel underneath neighboring Olentangy River Road that led the cows to the rest of pasture on what is now the site of the Schottenstein Center.
Collection of The Ohio State University. Funded through the Ohio Percent for Art program.
Material
144 stainless steel tubes in a 12 x 12 grid
Location
Outside at the Chadwick Arboretum, across the street from the Schottenstein Center
About the Artist
Austrian-born Erwin Redl splits his time between Bowling Green, Ohio, and New York, New York. He is a multidisciplinary artist who often works with light and architecture, creating novel ways to experience space. Redl views space as a “second skin” that can be altered and changed through art. His work embraces technology and digital implementation and employs LEDs, computer art and electronic music. Often working in tandem with existing architecture, his works transform the built environment into chambers of color, light and even sound. He visited The Ohio State University to create the mesmerizing light installation FETCH, which was on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts from November 2010 through May 2011. Another work, Shelter, nestled within the Chadwick Arboretum, allowed the artist to work with light differently than in many of his other projects. The vertical rods create shadows modulated by natural light rather than embedding light within them. His minimalist vocabulary remains visible in Shelter, a common language among many of his works.
