Contemporary Art Projects Installed in Thanksgiving Tower Renovated Lobby

Woods Capital recently unveiled two conceptual artworks in the lobby of Thanksgiving Tower to compliment the new modern aesthetic of the 50-story, 1.4 million square foot tower. Art advisor John Runyon collaborated with Jonas Woods, President of Woods Capital, to acquire works that engage the architecture in a non-traditional and site specific way.

The North lobby boasts Reproductions (Close-ups II) by Isabelle Cornaro while the South lobby features Steady Circles by Daniel Buren. Both works were painted directly on the wall surface.

Reproductions (Close-ups II) is a succession of three pieces created by colored acrylic spray applied directly to the wall. The perception of these pieces are dependent upon the position of the viewer. From afar they look like atmospheric landscapes composed of large, informal masses of blurred colors; yet closer proximity reveals each piece as a constellation of innumerable dots.

The work is consciously ambiguous, existing somewhere between a painting, installation and time-based artwork. Such ambiguity follows the interest of the artist, Isabelle Cornaro, in questioning the nature and condition of the artistic gesture, the relationship between the controlled and the aleatory, as well as the history of images and systems of transfer, interpretation and distribution.

Steady Circles is composed of five wall segments painted in Sky Blue – a color representative of Buren’s work. This piece features circles created with a striped pattern that endeavors to create the illusion of infinite continuation. Buren’s iconic stripes have been used in numerous urban environments, including in his work Les Deux Plateau, commonly known as the Colonnes de Buren, outside at Palais Royal in Paris.

Buren’s work is reflective of the environment in which it lives. He plays off the colors and lines of each space to create new perspectives.

"Daniel Buren is a living legend that paved the way for many other conceptual artists that studied his work” says Runyon. “A younger generation, fellow French artist, Isabelle Cornaro is no exception. Her practice has cinematic origins starting with a sequence of films and finishing with the production of misty atmospheric wall paintings. Appropriately the three meditative works are facing the Philip Johnson designed Thanks-Giving Square chapel.”

Woods Capital has invested more than $40 million in a complete curb to core revitalization of Thanksgiving Tower’s infrastructure, lobby and plaza areas, re-establishing this historic asset as the premier office tower in the thriving Main Street District of downtown Dallas. Woods Capital is thrilled to introduce unrivaled ground floor amenities this spring that will include Ascension Coffee, Gather Kitchen, and an executive fitness club.

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About the Artists

Isabelle Cornaro (b. 1974, France) lives and works in Paris and Geneva. Her work has been the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions including South London Gallery (London); Palais de Tokyo (Paris); LA><ART (Los Angeles); Frac Aquitaine (Bordeaux); Musée du Louvre (Paris); Archeo, The High Line (New York City); Beware Wet Paint, ICA (London) and One Torino, Palazzo Cavour (Turin); and Vide-poche, SculptureCenter (New York). Isabelle Cornaro is the 2016 curator of the Prize Fondation d'entreprise Ricard.

Daniel Buren was born in 1938 in Paris, France where he still lives and works today. He has been long recognized for his historically significant work at Documenta (Kassel); the Guggenheim Museum (New York); Grand Palais (Paris), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo); the Louvre (Paris); Palais Royal - Cour d’Honneur (Paris); Odaiba Bay (Tokyo); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao); Place de la Justice (Brussels) and the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas).