The installation of Danae Stratou, Concentric, 2016, has been delayed until further notice.

In early January, the Lower Colorado River Authority will lower Lake Austin by approximately ten feet. Installation of Concentric will be reevaluated once the lake level has been restored to its current, full state. More information about the LCRA project can be found here.

Proposal for the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria

Artist Danae Stratou (Greek, born 1964 in Athens) creates sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, and interventions in the landscape that explore concepts of time, nature, and cosmological systems. For Stratou, who lives and works in Athens, Greece, water and its accompanying environmental issues and rights have frequently served as both medium and inspiration. As the artist has said, water represents a “unifying (but politically charged) element” in her work.¹ She is best known for an installation occupying a twenty-five-acre site in the eastern Sahara desert. Developed by Stratou as part of the group D.A.ST. Arteam, Desert Breath, 1997, consists of two interlocking spirals formed by the displacement of sand in precise positive and negative conical shapes, which meet at a 100-foot-diameter oasis of water.

To research and execute aspects of her installations, Stratou often collaborates with technical experts, as she has done for Concentric, 2016, a new temporary commission for the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park. The artist worked with mathematicians at The University of Texas at Austin and engineers at Wolfson Unit, a marine technology research facility in England, to determine how to generate concentric ripples that would emanate perpetually from a central focal point on the water. Using the Lake Austin lagoon as a sculptural medium, the work is expressed as waves that simultaneously radiate from the center and dissipate as they expand, marking rhythmic time through form and movement. A gentle intervention, Concentric activates the landscape of the lagoon in a quiet, meditative manner.

¹ Danae Stratou, Concentric (commission proposal, The Contemporary Austin, 2016), 4.

Text by Julia V. Hendrickson, Assistant Curator, with assistance from Jessi DiTillio.