Playing Cat & Mouse at Canada Line City Centre Station
Date uploaded: August 13, 2012
Playing Cat & Mouse at Canada Line City Centre Station
August 8, 2012
CAT & MOUSE by Mark Soo
A Canada Line City Centre Station Public Art Mural
In Vancouver, B.C., a new public artwork has been installed at the Canada Line City Centre Station. Cat & Mouse consists of three “poems” arranged across the window. The poems convey their meaning graphically as much as through their “content”. The easily recognised phrases use distinct type faces and textures intertwined so that they read from both sides of the window and familiar terms are disrupted, encouraging visual agility and new associations.
An important aspect of this work is the texture and pattern of the fonts. The artist plays on the language and character of popular culture and commercial signage, referring to the siting of the work in the heart of the downtown commercial district. This text work joins other public artworks that incorporate language such as Ken Lum’s Monument for East Vancouver, Ron Terada’s The Words Don’t Fit the Picture at the Vancouver Public Library, and British artist Liam Gillick’s metal text that surrounds the Fairmont Hotel.
Artist Mark Soo lives and works in Berlin and Vancouver. His works often investigate social history and subjective experience through complex photo-based languages. Central to this is a consideration of the culturally and technologically determined role of the spectator. Soo has exhibited widely at venues including the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Western Bridge, Seattle; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham; Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Johann König, Berlin; and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris. He was the recipient of a Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award for the Visual Arts in 2009.
Program Information
The Canada Line City Centre Station mural is a project of the City of Vancouver Public Art Program in partnership with InTransit BC’s Canada Line Public Art Program. The station window is one of the platforms developed by the Public Art Program for artists’ temporary artist’s projects in the city.
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