Adrian Blackwell’s installation Scaffold and Horizons (Earth and Sky) opened on Saturday September 22as part of the launch of Toronto’s new Museum of Contemporary Art.
Toronto’s MOCA opened on September 22 after years of planning and the opening weekend featured 4 exhibitions. Blackwell’s installation functions as an "office of useful art", a set of agile furniture that can be organized to accommodate workshops, meetings, thinking and studying – for the Art in Use exhibition.
Both an artwork and a functional solution to an institutional need, Scaffold and Horizons (Earth and Sky)consists of a modular system of 30 steel frames, and 30 plywood and 21 felt surfaces. These elements are dimensioned in relation to both the human body and standard construction materials and can be configured in familiar and unfamiliar and useful and useless ways. The sulphur frames act as supports for the surfaces, but all elements can be deployed independently. The spectrum of colours is based on a palette of shades of the sky observed from the building’s fourth floor’s windows on June 15 & 16, 2018. Running for one year, from September 2018 – August 2019, the installation will be reconfigured four times in relation to different works in Art in Use space. The project is commissioned by MOCA Toronto.
