Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Art on the Run

One of my favorite pieces of art is Ripple by Tejo Remy and Rene Veenhuizen. You won't need to make an appointment at a gallery to see this piece as it's bolted to the outside of Arlington County's Water Treatment plant. You need only stroll along a delightful trail to take in its 800 feet of social commentary.

I enjoy Ripple for a number of reasons. It's creatively placed and has a well camouflaged meaning. I've come to appreciate that what looks like kids detritus is actually a novel statement on unexpected consequences, ripples if you will, of our behavior. And I get to ponder all this while jogging by.

Given my affinity for seemingly random acts of art, you can appreciate my joy of when I was running the Four Mile Run Wetlands Trail (not far from Ripple) and came across what seemed to be a painted stack of rocks. It wasn't immediately obvious what I was looking at: something discarded, a one off art project? As I ran further on, I saw another stack of painted rocks. Now I had to stop and take some pics. Check it out:

So what I did discover? It seems the Alexandria Commision on the Arts has sponsored three recent art installations. One of them is by Alexander Rudd. And on Alex's Instagram page are these pics:

Those are the sculptures I saw on the trail. In Alex's feed they were in the back of a moving truck.

As for more details, the article describing the art installations says only: "the Alexandria Commission on the Arts did not release information on the nature of those projects."

We got a good 'ol fashion public art puzzle to decode.

I don't think Alex is going to give us much in the way of hints. His 'gram bio reads:

Conceptual read vs arbitrary appearance + algorithmic disposability = objectivity confusion

Yeah, that clears everything up.

Still, challenge-excepted. I'll have to add Four Mile Run to my upcoming running routes to get some more viewing time in.

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