Garde -Temps / Tania RUIZ GUTIÉRREZ

Under the Cambie Bridge at West Second Avenue / Vancouver

Garde-temps is a light-based sculptural work located under the Cambie Street Bridge at West Second Avenue. It was commissioned by the City of Vancouver through its Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program.

The literal English translation for Garde-temps is timekeeper, but it is more commonly used in French to denote a timepiece. In the case of this artwork, it infers the notion of time capacitor or time condenser, if such a thing was possible.

The idea for this artwork was inspired by fragments of a poem by Rosario Castellanos, A word to the heir: “I will remain where I am, like those receptacles whose plug-holes got clogged... Time…slowly swamps over me.It moves and does not elapse, It swirls and lingers”.

This artwork is a vessel for the distorted appearance of the place and the passersby, and emits moving pictures oscillating between the abstract and the figurative. Its surface alternately shows images captured by the nearby close circuit thermal camera and a series of pre-programmed patterns obtained by transforming these images.

I have been exploring different subjects for years, amongst them the spatial dimension of motion pictures, cities as living organisms, early cinema apparatuses, and weaving techniques. This light-based work represents in a certain way the encounter of these disparate yet alongside paths. It is my intention that this object retains the dynamics of the place, much like a weaving work conserves the memory of its fabrication. Garde-temps, more than a sculpture, is a fountain — a fluid source of variations on a theme.