Noir, credited as the first artist to use the Berlin Wall as a canvas, continues to inspire and unite communities with his latest digital art series for the Olympics.
Pioneering French artist Thierry Noir’s colorful characters have returned to the streets of L.A. as part of a new digital installation “Gold” created for the Olympics. If you’ve driven down Sunset Boulevard recently, you may have noticed a bold animation of a diver performing a quadruple pike down the side of the Pendry Hotel in West Hollywood.
Or perhaps it was the hitter whacking a ball off the canvas? At various hours, vivid blocks of color move across the screens bringing life and excitement to the mundanity of our daily traffic jams.
“Although disparate, both art and sport have the power to inspire, to unite and to create hope. Both can break down barriers and dissolve political and cultural divisions,” the description reads on the artist’s website. “At a very difficult time in our collective history sport has the power to bring the world back together,” Noir says in another post about the work.
Noir is no stranger to using urban landscapes as his canvas, he was the first artist credited for painting the Berlin Wall with his lively works in 1984. Remnants of the five-mile-long piece are on display in Berlin’s East Side Gallery and a courtyard in New York City. Except, this time, it’s digital and covers the most spectacular buildings in prime real estate across 10 cities worldwide. Animated figures can be seen doing everything from archery and baseball to trampolining in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Moscow, Kampala, Lagos, London, Kingston, New York, Los Angeles.
Perhaps one of the most impressive spaces is the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, China. A giant, floating head and two arms can be seen playing table tennis on the 1,536 feet sphere.
As we face a slew of challenges within our communities, who better than Noir to bring this contemporary social expressionism to local shores and provide momentary respite from it all.
If you haven’t seen them yet, you can still catch these lively works until August 13, 2021. There are 20 viewings per hour from 7 am to 1 am from Sunday to Thursday, and from 7 am to 3 am from Friday to Saturday.
Location: 8430 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Featured Image: Instagram / @calvinzhou