Hasta La Ideas

Artist Tofer Chin’s black stalagmite sculptures invade a Rio de Janeiro park

The 30 mosquito bites that eventually landed him in the hospital from a Dengue scare didn’t stop artist Tofer Chin from installing his latest show in Rio de Janeiro’s Parque Lage. “Fourteen Black,” as the Los Angeles native calls it, runs until 30 April 2011 as part of Rojo’s Nova project.

To address the project’s theme about the absence of light, Chin placed 14 tall, black triangles—a shape that regularly appears in his work—around the Patos Lagoon in the park, located in the Jardim Botanico neighborhood. The wooden, acrylic-coated “black stalagmites,” as he calls them, are meant to be “living and breathing souls, ghosts, spirits, voids, shadows.”

In contrast to the abundant, bright, green surroundings, they work to emphasize the existence of dark, shady areas in the park and play on the idea of light versus absorption of light. Also, because of the way that light bounces off the sides of the angular sculptures, they give the scene a surreal digital touch.

You can get a behind-the-scenes look of the artist installing his work as well as other artists participating in the Nova project here .