As a newcomer to the city, one of my first encounters with Toronto?s many idiosyncrasies involved navigating a series of awkward intersections northwest of downtown. Just south of St. Clair Avenue, Vaughan Street cuts the city?s grid at a diagonal and veers to the west. This results in an uninhabitable traffic island that lay forlorn for decades, standing amidst the regular tangle of commuters in all directions.
The scaffold-like Three Points Where Two Lines Meet incorporates a hydro mast that powers its LED lights.
Artists Dan Young and Christian Giroux were recently commissioned to create a project on this site. Their response is Three Points Where Two Lines Meet, a new public artwork for the City of Toronto?s collection that includes a sculpture, the landscaping under it, and the sidewalk around it. At night, the site hosts a programmed ambient light show. Young and Giroux also created an accompanying Spotify playlist for viewers of the piece. (Search the public artwork title; it?s a trip.) The site-specific sculpture approximates a colourful scaffold, sitting at a level height of 3.2 metres. A highly engineered series of intersecting box trusses floats over the sidewalk. Slender diagonal columns touch the ground at three points, offset from the curb?s edge around the triangular island. The title of the sculpture comes from pop culture?specifically, British band Alt-J?s song Tessellate: ?Triangles are my favourite shape / Three points where two lines meet??
The project c...