Art is often a moving experience. Sometimes, literally so. On Thursday, June 23, from 6 to 7:30pm, two bright red I-GO Honda Fit cars became part of a conceptual art piece performed outside Columbia College’s A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Ave., as part of its “Running Room” exhibition. Artist Erik Peterson titled the kinetic performance “Two Tow’n.”
“I’m adding a bit of magic back into the urban milieu,” Peterson said. “This avant-garde art piece, referencing the city and its movement, meshes well with I-GO’s local Chicago mission to deliver the forward-thinking, non-profit, urban crowd into the future.”
Pedestrians who happened to be there at the time can be forgiven for wondering if they were seeing double.
The two identical cars were parked on opposite sides of the street outside A+D Gallery, on the 600 block of South Wabash. At 6 p.m. — the time that parking restrictions on the street are lifted — two tow trucks arrived, hitched up the cars, and towed them away. In fact, they drove them around the block only to return and unload the cars, each to the side of the street opposite of where it started.
The idea, Peterson said, was “to upset and subvert the repetition of the cityscape and provide a little humor to the passerby who happen to notice this odd occurrence.”
As for I-GO, which maintains strong relationships and discount programs with Columbia College and many other local campuses, we’re just flattered that an artist thought us worthy of subject matter. We’re thinking of changing our name to Vincent Van I-GO.
