LAX Unveils Three New Artworks

Yesterday the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) celebrated the completion of three major public art commissions in the newly redesigned Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX: Bell Tower by Mark Bradford; Air Garden by Ball-Nogues Studio; and ΣLAX by Pae White. Created by critically renowned, Los Angeles-based artists, these new permanent artworks are the largest public art commissions to date for both LAX and the City.

“The Tom Bradley International Terminal is the gateway between Los Angeles and the rest of the world, so this is an incredible opportunity to showcase our city’s cultural vitality and innovative spirit on an international stage,” says Sarah Cifarelli, airport art manager. “With these bold, ambitious works, we can influence and elevate visitors’ experience of Los Angeles as a world-class cultural destination.”

Designed by renowned architect Curt Fentress, the new terminal features abundant natural light, dramatic open spaces, and a flowing roofline inspired by the Pacific Ocean. Additionally, Fentress, whose portfolio also includes several museums, designed the terminal in a way that embraces and showcases the artworks as an integral part of the building’s design. The result is a rare, symbiotic relationship between art and architecture on a grand scale, which literally shapes and colors how passengers experience LAX, and by extension, Los Angeles.

“In many ways, these commissions represent a watershed moment for public art in the City of Los Angeles,” says Felicia Filer, director of DCA’s public art division. “When the City established its Public Percent for Art Program 25 years ago, public art was often treated as an afterthought – and Los Angeles was not widely recognized as the cultural destination it is today,” Filer says. “And here we have world-renowned, Los Angeles-based artists who have created three magnificent works that have already become iconic symbols of this wonderful public space.”

As additional evidence of public art’s rising profile in Los Angeles’ civic and cultural life, Cifarelli and Filer cite the prestige and passion of the project’s art oversight committee, which included influential museum directors such Ann Philbin of the Hammer Museum of Art and Michael Govan of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as artist and curator Malik Gaines and Samual Hoi, then-president of the Otis College of Art and Design.

“The members of the oversight committee encouraged us to be bold, and to challenge preconceived notions about what public art is or should be,” Cifarelli says. “With their guidance, we decided to commission ambitious, large-scale works that would be defining features of the new terminal’s design.” Mark Bradford, Ball-Nogues Studio, and Pae White were selected to fulfill this curatorial mission.

Located on the mezzanine level of the terminal’s Departures Hall, Mark Bradford’s monumental sculpture Bell Tower can be viewed by the general public and ticketed passengers alike. Suspended from a skylight above the TSA security screening area, Bell Tower provides a prominent focal point for the vast hall and marks its transition from a public space to a restricted one. Bradford modeled the sculpture on a medieval bell tower, citing its dual purpose as both a civic gathering spot and a source of surveillance. The sculpture’s multilayered, collage-like surface consists of 712 individual shaped panels cut from salvaged plywood and posters collected from construction sites throughout Los Angeles, which have been sanded and treated to create a more cohesive surface, leaving only abstracted traces of the original materials.

In the heart of the terminal’s Great Hall, Air Garden is a large-scale sculptural installation by Ball-Nogues Studio. As its name suggests, Air Garden appears an oasis amid the terminal’s bustling retail and concessions, filling the terminal’s north light well with a sinuous, dynamic cloud of color. Made of hand-beaded chain catenaries, Air Garden recalls a delicate beaded curtain, simultaneously brilliant and translucent, reimagined as an architectural form. The light well offers many distinct views of Air Garden, which drapes gracefully from the building’s ceiling down to the baggage claim area at ground level. Air Garden appears to shift shapes depending on the light and viewer’s perspective, becoming a reflective dance of color, light, and shadows.

As visitors disembark at TBIT, they are welcomed by Pae White’s artwork, ΣLAX. Suspended above the terminal’s north and south “sterile corridors” leading international passengers to customs, this linear sculpture inverts the idea of functional infrastructure, turning security into art and art into security by deploying an alternative system of baroque “P”-shaped brackets strung with or without brightly colored cordage. The brackets without cordage serve as relics of the process that created the artwork and make it site specific: a document of the many seen and unseen contingencies that shaped it.  The work consists of 23.86 miles of custom-dyed cordage in three distinct color palettes that pay homage to the colored-tiled mosaics by Charles D. Kratka, located in Terminals 3, 4, and 6. The work also includes 7,484 gold brackets – eleven of which are actual 14K gold.  Attempting to identify the actual gold brackets offers passengers a playful distraction from the long journey to customs.

Bell Tower, Air Garden, and ΣLAX were funded by Los Angeles World Airports through the City of Los Angeles’ Public Percent for Public Art Program, and administered by the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. This program dedicates one percent of the construction cost of the City’s capital improvement projects to contribute enduring, contemporary art experiences at the city’s public facilities.