ART

FIAC: WU TSANG UNVEILS FIRST PIECE OF SWAROVSKI SERIES PROJECT

By Crash redaction

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Los Angeles-based artist, performer, and filmmaker Wu Tsang just introduced an exclusive artwork in collaboration with Swarovski as part of the 2015 FIAC. Selected by Nadja Swarovski and FIAC director Jennifer Flay, the artist inaugurated in collaboration with Swarovski a monumental installation named Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The piece, made of nearly 250,000 Swarovski crystals flowing on a 5,5-meter structure, is the artist’s biggest creation to date. Talking about the installation, Tsang evokes a specific scene in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy unveils the fraud behind the wizard’s character, whose disembodied voice had been bewitching the people of the Emerald City. Following this inspiration and working in the Swarovski ateliers, the artist assembled LED lights and crystal chains, which verticality reminds of a cascade or an actual curtain. Crystals become a metaphor for langage, and the exploration of their acoustics create a link with the voice’s medium, which endless features are highlighted by color, textures, and transparency movements. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain is the first order of many to come as part of the Swarovski Series project, which aims at supporting artists using crystal in their work. Every year during FIAC, Swarovski will commission a new contemporary artist to present a piece where crystals are used as the main creative medium. Swarovski is no stranger to artistic creation. The iconic Austrian crystal house already collaborated with FIAC in 2014 through a piece created by Didier Marcel, Dew, and cultivates long-lasting relationships with prestigious art institutions such as Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, or London’s Design Museum.

Wu Tsang monumental installation is not to miss. Placed strategically on the Grand Palais’ Balcon d’Honneur, the luminous artwork is visible from every angle of the fair and will be on display for the entire duration of FIAC from October 21 to 25, 2015.