Vancouver’s Coolest Public Art: The Meeting
Photo: Ted Topping
Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city’s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks, Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.
The circular grouping of eight crouching, life-size men at Cardero Park is possibly one of the most photographed sculptures of the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale (2009-2011). I suggest you sip your iced frappuccino on the patio at the Starbucks in the adjacent Westin Bayshore hotel—the hotel where the IOC stayed during the Olympics—and watch the public interact with the artwork. The parade of people posing and taking pictures is continuous as visitors and locals just cannot resist the idea of joining the bright red men of Chinese sculptor Wang Shugang’s The Meeting.
People mimic the mens' pose, they climb on them, hug them, and they sit around them as if one of the bronze sculptures were part of their group.
Photo: Ted Topping
The piece, better known locally as the “Red Men,” was originally exhibited during the G-8 meeting of world leaders in Heiligendamm, Germany in 2007. The Meeting is one of 29 sculptures and dozens of new media pieces that form the Biennale’s temporary alfresco exhibition in Vancouver, at the Vancouver International Airport, at the new Canada Line stations, and wrapped on buses and rapid transit trains. The Biennale’s theme is “in-TRANSIT-ion.”
Photo: Ted Topping
Have you spotted any other cool outdoor art in Vancouver or other cities that you think deserves to be featured? Let us know in the comments!
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