Detail of Sparrow Lane by Holly Andres, on view at Vermont/Beverly Station.
Have you seen this art? Metro’s Art Lightboxes are getting around. In addition to the often large-scale work that Metro Art brings to stations throughout Los Angeles County, the program also presents mini photography exhibitions by artists in select Red and Purple Line stations.
Each lightbox series is comprised of seven photographic transparencies, each measuring three by four feet and sequentially arranged on internally illuminated boxes. Initiated in 2001, each photography series remains on view in a given station for several months at a time. See past photo lightboxes here.
Photo lightboxes on display in one of the Red Line stations. The series is intended to contribute something visually engaging for customers and enhance the overall experience of taking transit.
The most recent rotation happened last week and features the following artists at Red and Purple Line stations:
The Center for Land Use Interpretation, You Are / Are Not Here at Universal City Station
Michael Light, LA Day, LA Night at Hollywood/Highland Station
Holly Andres, Sparrow Lane at Vermont/Beverly Station
Todd Hido, A Road Divided at 7th Street/Metro Center Station
Chris Jordan, Intolerable Beauty at Wilshire/Normandie Station
See details of more photographs below.
And then perhaps plan yourself a little art tour, making your way south from Universal City, through Hollywood and downtown, then loop west to Wilshire/Normandie in Koreatown.
Detail of You Are / Are Not Here by The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), on view at Universal City Station.
Detail of LA Day, LA Night by Michael Light, on view at Hollywood/Highland Station.
Detail of Intolerable Beauty by Chris Jordan, on view at Wilshire/Normandie Station.
Categories: Metro Art
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Linnea on October 30, 2012 at 1:12 PM said:
Intolerable Beauty is one of the better pieces of art I’ve seen on the Metro system. Worth looking at several times. LA Day, La Night was mildly interesting, and Sparrow Lane was pretentious and annoying to walk by day after day.
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Ditto that.
“Intolerable Beauty”‘s ability to convey the inexorable scale of human involvement with our environment while still finding appreciation in color, form and patterns is a deliciously conflicted celebration wrapped in a hint of a warning. The concrete abstraction that allows the observer to explore many levels of graphic design and philosophical intent. An almost Sidney-Pollack-like layered layering exploration is invited through the artist’s restraint from clumsily brandishing a pre-packaged conclusion.
On the other extreme is the especially memorable but jarring irony of “Sparrow Lane”. Stretching between the unidimensionality of 50’s dream characters across to the actual living realities of LA’s richly textured human tapestry flowing past, the installation seems painfully out of touch. Or maybe “Sparrow Lane” should be viewed like the hyper-detailed drawings from Audubon’s iconic work, The Birds of North America–a masterfully captured glimpse of something as it never quite was.
Thx for the info, Steve. That’s ashame, though. I think with the advent of late-night rail service, there must be some advertisers (or PSAs?) that would be could benefit from a captive audience. Oh well. I just hope the equipment remains in working order so the door remains open to future use! 🙂
Intolerable Beauty is one of the better pieces of art I’ve seen on the Metro system. Worth looking at several times. LA Day, La Night was mildly interesting, and Sparrow Lane was pretentious and annoying to walk by day after day.
Speaking of wall-based displays, whatever happened to those tunnel-mounted LEDs that would show video ads to riders on the Red Line between Hollywood/Highland and Universal City stations? Are they still in use?
Hi Alika;
I don’t think those have been used for some time, unless I’m mistaken. I think a third-party vendor was selling that ad space and am unsure how much demand there was for it.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source