French Artist Paints Abandoned LA Bates Motel Completely White
A public art project of French installation artist Vincent Lamouroux. (AFP)
A French artist has completely covered a derelict Los Angeles motel — palm trees and all — with a dazzling coat of white paint to create an enormous, ghostly artwork.
Called “Projections,” the piece by Vincent Lamouroux has been publicly unveiled in LA’s trendy Silver Lake neighborhood, and instantly became a local attraction, with fascinated passers-by stopping to snap images of the motel.
Lamouroux used an environmentally friendly limewash to cover the so-called Bates Motel, including several towering palm trees and the fence around the rundown property.
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The motel, so nicknamed for its resemblance to the motel in Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary thriller ‘Psycho.’ (AFP)
The seedy motel, which has been closed for years, got its name from its proximity to nearby Bates Avenue and its passing resemblance to the hotel in the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho.
“The idea behind this project was to cover the entire building and to think about the building as a giant sculpture (on) the scale of the urban landscape … with this idea we could provoke … a strong change in order to create some attention,” said Lamouroux, a Paris resident, who has made frequent trips to Los Angeles over the past 15 years.
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A woman wearing a white glove gestures for her photograph of ‘Projection.’ (AFP)
He chose white because it “could bring the most light, could cause a sort of bedazzlement. It also creates something rather positive; perhaps the idea of a blank projection screen for our desires and wants, and for all our imaginings,” he said.
The installation is the culmination of two years’ work and will be guarded for two weeks before the weather and graffiti artists inevitably reclaim the building.
The motel is eventually expected to be torn down and replaced with a new development.
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