A modest veil in Vancouver

Yes, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver are pretty inescapable right now, and yes, I'm not exactly a sporty type (to say the least). One thing that has caught my eye, and just about everyone else's in Vancouver, is the gorgeous facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery. The piece, titled A Modest Veil, is by artist Michael Lin and was commisioned as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. I've seen shots of it turn up on Twitter (thanks to Flare Mag's Lisa Tant), and on Facebook (courtesy of designer William MacDonald) as well as all over Flickr, so wanted to see what else I could dig up.

Lin is known for his monumantal murals which reference trad Taiwanese fabrics, with their intense colours and stylized floral patterns. In the past his work has shown up on the floor and walls of places like P.S.1 in New York and the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, though by size alone A Modest Veil was a massive task; each panel was hand-painted and then mounted on a huge framework to cover the museum's Goergia Street frontage. If you fancy, you can snag a piece of Michael Lin for your own place, since he designed a carpet called Formosa for Nanimarquina (though I'd love to know what's gonna happen to the Vancouver piece once it comes down). For fun, I've also added in a Youtube interview with the man himself. [Image 1: Cara_Rouge on Flickr. Image 2: CityCaucus.com on Flickr] 

Update on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 03:13PM by Arren

Just heard from Andrew Riley at the Vancouver Art Gallery - If you fancy a takeaway souvenir of Michael Lin's stunning work just hit the Gallery Store. Lin has created custom print dust jackets in his signature floral pattern for a bunch of books, including Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man and Visions of British Columbia: A Landscape Manual.