Bulgarian artist Christo—who is best known for his massive “wrapping” of buildings and other monuments—has unveiled his latest installation, The Floating Piers. If you visit Italy’s Lake Iseo before July 3, you can experience what it’s like to walk on water.
On setting foot on the piers, a floating dock system of 220,000 high-density polyethylene cubes which undulate with the waves, visitors will experience the closest approximation to what it’s like to walk on water. Seem like a gimmick, or even more of an amusement park attraction than high art? Maybe, but installation art, in its relatively short history, has always been controversial.
The use of installation in contemporary art began to develop in the 1970s as a way of democratizing the art experience. Installation enables the viewer to have a more active role in the consumption of the artwork, rather than passively viewing it. As such, the meaning of the artwork was no longer just about what the artist wanted to express, but about the viewer’s experience of and interaction with it.
