Chronochroma 6, A Site-Specific Installation by Rodney LaTourelle

By Roewan Crowe, UWFA Member-at-LargeChronochroma 6

Many of you have likely walked through Rodney LaTourelle’s latest site-specific installation, Chronochroma 6, which has transformed the Centennial-Duckworth Hallway. Each time I walk through this hallway, I am immersed in this work of art and find myself enlivened and invigorated. This project was spearheaded by Serena Keshavjee, Associate Professor and Coordinator in the Art History Program, with full support from Jennifer Gibson, curator of Gallery 1C03.

Serena Keshavjee is working on a very long-term and slow campaign to improve the visual environment of Centennial Hall. For example, she wants to restore the Buffeteria back to its glory of 1972 when it was painted with supergraphics designed by Ursula Ferguson, and was furnished with Canadian-designed lounging furniture. The Centennial Hall passageway came out of this larger project.

When asked by Serena Keshavjee to transform the highly articulated but drab passageway into a more inviting space, LaTourelle elected to change the hall itself into a work of art. In 2008 he created Interval, a work that consisted of site-specific installations in Gallery 1C03 and in the Hamilton Galleria. He was inspired at the time by the original supergraphic murals that had animated the interior surfaces of Centennial Hall in 1972. Both of these temporary installations and the now permanent Chronochroma 6 evoke the glory days of Centennial Hall. The Centennial-Duckworth Hallway is enlivened with a wide range of contemporary colours that highlight rather than hide the structural trusses of the architecture, referring to  the original design conception for the building. Neil Minuk of Din Projects donated his time to take on the task of coordinating the colours and creating the text panels.

LaTourelle’s work also invokes the prairie Structurist artists, particularly Eli Bornstein, whose Structurist Relief in Fifteen Parts has been a prominent fixture at Winnipeg’s International Airport since 1964. Bornstein uses brightly coloured geometrical elements to evoke the structures of nature, while LaTourelle uses coloured geometrical elements to emphasize the structural/aesthetic qualities of the architecture. The immersive quality of the installation invokes the potential mood-altering effects of colour, a central theme of LaTourelle’s work. For those walking through this corridor, the serial play of strong hues also creates an optical illusion, as a result of which the trusses seem to change in scale. As LaTourelle’s title Chronochroma 6 implies, this piece thematizes the effects of different colours that reflect off our retinas as we pass through the space, that is, as we pass through time. This creates highly personal experiences, inducing different moods in different people.

LaTourelle’s luminous work inhabits a liminal zone between architecture and art. Just as with his recent colour design for the interior of the Buhler Centre, one might ask whether it is architecture enhanced by art, or art enhanced by its immersive, that is, architectural nature.

Rodney LaTourelle is a Winnipeg-born artist currently living and practicing in Berlin. Trained as a landscape architect, Latourelle creates immersive polychrome art environments. His work has been exhibited in Russia, Germany, Poland, at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and at UQAM in Montreal.  

Roewan Crowe thanks Serena Keshavjee and Jennifer Gibson for providing the text and information for this article. Photo Credit for Chronochroma 6: Gallery 1C03.