THE SNOW SHOW OF 2004 – A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN ART HISTORY

SNOW AS ARTISTIC METAPHOR AND MEDIA

A historical event in the world of art occurred during the Winter of 2004 in Finland. In tandem with Curator Lance Fung, a whole host of international creative talents designed and exhibited works of snow and ice in the Lapland towns of Rovaniemi and Kemi in an exhibition entitled The Snow Show.

Light glows through an icy construction by the team of
Hollimen, Reuter, Sandman and Barry.

The various forms of frozen water became an avant-garde material for architects open to utilizing unusual building materials. It was discovered that snow lends itself to creative building blocks while ice serves as a long-lasting binder and slush provides a flowing element for sculptural aspects.

Large free-standing “archetonic” forms were built by over 60 architects, designers and artists from around the world, who worked jointly as paired partners, such as Arata Isozaki and Yoko Ono, to design and create structures of environmental art.

Ice and snow is transformed into mystical geometry in the
work of Arata Isozaki and Yoko Ono.

Although the main elements of these structure-sculptures were ice and snow, many of the designs included mixed media, video, light, sound and other building materials as well. The end result demonstrated the ephemeral and ethereal nature of working with the elements of frozen water.

The chill of an Finlandic sky is highlighted against an
opaque structure built by Zaha Hadid and Cai Guo-Qiang.

Sponsored by New York’s Scandinavian-American Foundation, this unique historical exhibition of 2004 demonstrated how collaborative art can evolve in a natural but magical and creative direction which serves to fire the imagination and heart in a completely unique way.

Curator Fung is now in the process of organizing a new Snow Show for the Winter of 2006 in Turin, Italy.

All copyrighted images this page courtesy The Snow Show©