Trip to Downtown Santa Monica Offers Psychedelic Experience

By Lookout Staff

March 6, 2018 -- Visitors to the Downtown will be treated to a mind-twisting experience when they visit triangle square across the street from Santa Monica Place this spring.

"Tunnel Vision" -- a series of ten sculptures composed of 20-foot linear rings by Los Angeles-based visual artist Jen Stark -- offers the sense of peering into a giant kaleidoscope.

When viewed from one end, the row of paint-coated aluminum rings, each measuring 5 feet in diameter, is filled with vibrant colors. From the other end, the colors become monochromatic black and white.

The "visual systems" reflect the artist's trademark "vibrant fractal-bending, pattern-echoing" style, Downtown officials said.

"Tunnel Vision" (Courtesy DTSM)

"The shifting gradient of circles and colors revealed in aligning the sculpture's rings explores Stark's musings in nature and patterns in evolution, geography, and sacred geometry," they said.

"The resulting works often resemble organic, molecular, cloud-like structures, and are imbued with kinetic, undulating effects that serve to dislocate the viewer from staid reality into an immersive ecosphere of echoing patterns and the implausible designs found in nature."

A Miami native, Stark's art works have been featured at institutions across the globe, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Her works also have been exhibited in major shows in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Thailand and Canada.

Stark's sculptures are the latest installment in ROAM Santa Monica, a series of public art works that "create environments that foster positive social interactions and enliven public spaces" Downtown, officials said.

The initiative is a joint effort between Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. (DTSM) and the City's Art Commission's public art initiative.

The works, which were installed February 21, "will run indefinitely through time and space," officials said.

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