1982 – wood, iron, steel, terracotta, cement
In a small valley in the midst of the park, the artist created a pathway which follows a meandering brook. Several meters away from each other, two sets of stairs, one in wood and the other in steel, descend into the valley where they meet. Continuing on parallel to each other, they reach a platform where a seat offers a moment of rest. The pathways continue on, this time changing places: the steel continuing from where the wood left off and vice versa. At last, they run inside a kind of idyllic refuge: a heart-shaped pool which holds water from the brook. The stream flows underneath an arched bridge where it tumbles in a waterfall down the hill. In the silence of the path, the water falling creates an echo. Here, steel and wood become the protagonists of a love story. In Trakas’s Pathway, the unknowns, the sense of danger, and the separation and reconciliation become metaphors that create the narrative that unfolds along the path. The stream of water flowing underneath the whole piece becomes a paradigm of life and its events. Before completing his artwork, Trakas insisted on creating an explosion fuelled by dynamite to create the heart-shaped pool because, as he rightly stated, “there can be no love without an explosion.”
