Limitless, Ernst & Young Plaza, Los Angeles, CA

Limitless, 2009 by Ruth Pastine was commissioned by Brookfield Properties for Ernst & Young Plaza in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. The site-specific installation is comprised of eight large-scale vertical paintings and features four paintings from Pastine’s Blue Orange Series and four works from the artist’s Red Green Series. Each quartet of four paintings is composed of two diptych pairs installed on the central walls in each space. Pastine states, “I was inspired by the monumentality of the architecture and the symmetry of adjoining spaces, that have mirror image structural elevations but are illuminated by distinctly opposing natural light exposures. I sited the Blue Orange Series in the cool light bathing the North Lobby, and installed the Red Green Series in the warm light suffusing the South atrium lobby facing the terrace gardens. I was driven to create a sense of reciprocity between the monumentality of the architecture and the art, bringing awareness to the abstract qualities of iconic scale, symmetry, and asymmetry inherent in my paintings which the architecture shares. I wanted to engage the sensation of expansion and closure through the dynamic installation of diptych pairs which reveal the perceptual interplay of color and light between the four paintings in each series.” Ruth Pastine’s Limitless, 2009 was unveiled with Perkins + Will’s completed renovations of Ernst & Young Plaza in December 2009. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill architectural firm designed the granite and glass skyscraper in 1985.

December 2009