Aperture
Work in Progress
APERTURE is a luminous work, located at the James A. Richardson Airport in Winnipeg, Canada. It is built using more than 200 horizontal layers of 19 mm glass with LED lights embedded within.
The LEDs are wrapped in dichroic glass filters, creating shifting colour tones of blue, violet and gold. The unique lighting brings out the nuances and details of the sculpted glass form.
APERTURE is a response to airport architect Cesar Pelli’s fascination with the Canadian prairie horizon which stretches to infinity across the landscape, separating sky from earth.
APERTURE’S two illuminated glass forms create an opening, offering the viewer a new perspective of the prairie landscape, visible through the glass walls of the airport. This visual orifice focuses the viewer’s attention directly on the horizon line, incorporating the horizon into the work itself.
The sculpture seeks to identify the essence of the site and perhaps to compel the viewer to consider the environment in a new way.
The work can be perceived as windswept snow, river ice at breakup, furrowed farmland, rock strata on the shores of Lake Manitoba or Buffalo stones, the large boulders that sit stoically on the prairie. It echoes one of the most striking architectural features of the airport, Pelli’s dramatic cantilevered “plane wing” roof.