Metro’s LAX/Metro Transit Center Station is a major new multimodal transit hub that will provide a gateway connection between Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and Metro’s regional transit system.
LAX/MTC is part of the K Line, near Aviation Blvd/96th Street, and is designed in sync with an Automated People Mover (APM) being built and operated by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA). Read more about the transit project here.
Project Description
The Distance of the Sun consists of a series of vessels, both real and imagined, rafted together in increasing size to create a spiral pathway suspended in the air. Drawing inspiration from both contemporary designs and ancient motifs, these spacecraft embody the universal dreams of spaceflight from every culture and age across the globe.
For this monumental project, Kaino teamed up with Origami Master Robert J Lang and SoLA Impact at the Tech Center at the Beehive to invite young people from South Los Angeles to create additional images of spaceships from their imagination. From these 2D drawings, Kaino chose several for Lang to transform into intricate 3D origami sculptures. The paper objects were then scanned and utilized in the assembly of the pieces comprising the final sculpture.
The endmost spacecraft on the sculpture is connected to a ladder that reaches up to a circular oculus carved out from the expansive, ribbed ceiling. The ladder seemingly climbs to the heavens, a reference to the short story The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino about the memory of a time long gone, when the moon and the earth were so close that one might hoist a ladder from a ship and walk to each celestial body. This work is a meditation on our collective ambitions and our shared hope. It is a question about the possibilities of collaboration, set in a world increasingly about self-preservation. It is a walk to the stars created from our materialized imagination and a bridge to our future created from the designs of our past.
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STATION ARTIST
GLENN KAINO (b. 1972, Los Angeles) reconfigures the conditions of distinct cultural spheres into ecologies of making in which seemingly disparate materials and ideas are brought into contact. His studio practice includes sculpture, painting, filmmaking, performance, installation and large-scale public work. He also operates outside the traditional purview of contemporary art, instigating collaborations with other modes of culture—ranging from tech to music to political organizing. Kaino’s work has been exhibited at the High Museum of Art; the San Jose Museum of Art; Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Andy Warhol Museum; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Artpace San Antonio, and REDCAT, Los Angeles. Kaino’s work has been featured in Desert X, the 13th International Cairo Biennale, the 12th Biennale de Lyon, Performa, the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Whitney Biennial and Prospect.3, New Orleans. Kaino’s work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Kaino is an Emmy and Webby Award-winning producer and documentarian, whose films have been featured at the Tribeca Film Festival and SXSW.