George Trakas

George Trakas (Québec City, 1944 – )

Having already taken part in Documenta 6 in Kassel (1977), George Trakas was among the first artists invited to Celle in 1981. Venturing off the park trail to traverse usually unexplored areas, the artist came across a valley crossed by a flowing stream. Following the course of the water, he discovered tree forms and terrain configurations that inspired building his Pathway of Love here. From the idea, he quickly moved to construction and, equipped with wooden boards and iron in the form of long beams and other formats, he set to work welding the iron components and assembling the wooden parts, even using a miner’s headlamp to continue working after sunset.

As the path took shape within the forest, the artist engaged the collector in a reflection on the small heart-shaped pond that Trakas wanted to make as the culmination of the Pathway. Trakas not only wanted to dig away the earth to create a water basin but he also desired to generate an explosion within the space and insisted “there is no love without explosion.” Given the insistence, Giuliano Gori personally undertook to find a solution to this unusual request. The early 1980s were still a period of political terrorism and violence in Italy, and obtaining permits for a controlled detonation was extremely complicated. In the end, a solution was found that included the supervision of some demolition experts. The scheduled date for the explosion coincided with the presence at Celleof a team of German television operators, who were very enthusiastic to film this extraordinary phase of Trakas’s work. With cameras kept at a safe distance, the experts initiated the explosion, releasing a large amount of water from underground. The artist expressed his joy by taking his young daughter by the hand for a celebratory and wild dance under the spouting water. Before returning to America with her father, the daughter promised the Gori family she would come back to Celle in the future: she was already thinking about being married at the place of love created by her father. A timeless promise that everyone at Celle eagerly awaits!

“Wood represents the woman and steel the man. Their passage through the valley begins at the stairs and ends in the heart-shaped dam. However, end in this particular space may not mean death but, perhaps.Evidence of a passionate act. From the base of the stairs to the heart may also be felt as a passage through life from birth through[the] old age of the couple and the structural details along the way relate to stages in life: youth, adolescence, courtship, marriage, moving together arm in arm, gaining strength, independence, and wisdom…” George Trakas in Gori Collection: Site Specific Art at the Fattoria di Celle, ed. Gli Ori, Pistoia, 2009, p395.

Works by the artist

The Pathway of Love

For more info:

wikipedia.org