Azure

One of the newest and largest art installations in Hong Kong symbolizes the past, the present and the future of the former British colony. The three mammoth glass sculptures were created half a world away, by Warren Carter of Winnipeg, Canada.

The Chronos. Trilogy, a subtly rendered twenty five ton homage to the history of the former British colony, now animates the foyer of Lincon House, a new twenty five story office tower. Created from glass panels that were subjected to Carthers refined carving, grinding, sandblasting laminating and painting techniques, the trilogy was commissioned by the Swire Group, owners of Cathy Pacific Airlines, a sizable portion of Coca Cola and a significant chunk of Hong Kong real estate. The three components of Cronos - Vestige, Sea of Time, and Approach of Time - appear at first to be essentially abstract works. But in fact they respectively symbolize Hong Kong's history, its present and the future.

Vestige, the first piece one sees upon entering the building, is alternatively lit on its surface and from within in a computer controlled cycle that suggests an ancient clockwork. Small dichroic disks, embedded in the glass in a pattern found in early Chinese bronzes, change color from blue to yellow in response to the changing illumination. In Sea of Time, deeply carved waves and repetitive patterns of texture and color draw an analogy to the sea and its ceaseless rhythms . Along the sculptures thirty-meter horizontal span, patterns of disks similar to those in Vestige evolve into richly colored squares and finally into sleek, cool contemporary looking grids. By day, Approach of Time shown here, is a transparent wash of pink , yellow, green, russet and grey. At night it changes into glowing tones of bronze and silver, highlighted by brilliant blue figures suggesting plan and section views of a ships hull- an allusion to Hong Kong's maritime heritage and the fact that the land underneath Lincon House was once the Swire Group's shipyards.

All this is built upon an underlying grid which echoes the final panels of Sea of Time and which Carther says refers to modern office towers, the digital world and to the future. Carther together with his six studio assistants, devoted eighteen months and hundreds of eighteen hour days to this project. But by the end of the grueling process, the artist was a Hong Kong celebrity. At the Cronos Trilogy's official opening this spring, Carther was tailed by approximately twenty photographers. Jacky Chan, whose film premiered the day before and who happened to be staying at the same hotel...attracted only half as many paparazzi.

Gerry Kopelow