This Massive 50-Foot LED Sculpture is Coming to SF
From the playa to the park, new light art takes root in Hayes Valley. Charles Gadeken’s Squared, a 50-foot-tall LED sculpture, comes to Patricia’s Green. It’s like a super-colorful Bay Lights on acid with waves of trippy light pulsating at night.
The San Francisco Arts Commission and Recreation and Park Department announced a new yearlong public art installation in Hayes Valley’s Patricia’s Green made possible with funding from developer impact fees. Squared is a 50-foot-tall tree “reimagined in a futuristic world post nature,” according to the artist Charles Gadeken. At night, the sculpture performs a light show of in an almost infinite array of color patterns, creating a different experience and ambiance from one minute to the next.
Squared Dedication Event with Live Music
Saturday, May 5, 2018 | 6-9pm
Patricia’s Green, 499 Octavia, SF
FREECome welcome Squared to Patricia’s Green. Squared is a 50ft LED sculpture that will light up for the first time in Hayes Valley on May 5th. Join artist Charles Gadeken and friends for a celebration filled with live chamber music, fun and a monumental work of art.
Fun for all ages, they will have popcorn, cotton candy and face painting.
Previously exhibited at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and at Burning Man, Squared features 786 white plastic cubes arrayed in fractal clusters on a black steel square tube frame. Each cube holds 12-24 individually addressable LEDs, programmed through custom software to generate millions of colors and thousands of patterns. A pre-set program directs waves of colors and patterns that sweep over the tree to create an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of light.
About Charles Gadeken
Charles Gadeken is a professional industrial artist working in the Bay Area for over 20 years. His monumental interactive public artworks, which include commissions by Black Rock Arts Foundation, Insomniac Events, Coachella, Absolut Vodka, and the City of Palo Alto, have been exhibited internationally. His artistic practice seeks to realize the potential for unexpected magic and serendipity in everyday life, depicting natural objects in a fantastic way. His goal through this work is to instill a sense of play into the environment, taking the form of things we tend to overlook and remaking them as magical items that exist as real life portals to our imagination.
Charles is dedicated to increasing artistic community and public awareness of art, through interactive experiences in the shop and on the world stage. Many of his pieces are interactive, encouraging spectators to become participants in the artistic experience. He has created the Box Shop, a communal art space in San Francisco that provides access to high quality tools for local artists and makers.
The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy. Our programs include: Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Investments, Public Art, SFAC Galleries and Street Artist Licensing. To learn more visit, sfartscommission.org.
