A Busy Street
This painting by Nicoletta Baumeister on the 3rd floor of City Hall depicts our complex urban environment through shapes and lines.
Artist: Nicoletta Baumeister
Location: 3rd Floor Reception Area at City Hall (13450 104 Ave)
Category: Civic collection
Year Installed: 2015
About A Busy Street
“A Busy Street” is a painting done in acrylic on canvas, measuring 121.6 cm by 121.2 cm, and which is part of the artist’s Chaos and Order series. Using two distinctive elements—shapes and lines—Baumeister depicts our complex urban environment that is in flux. Coloured irregular shapes symbolize chaos and tonal lines symbolize the activity of making order.
Baumeister says, “Although there is no apparent pattern, there does appear to be an internal sense of motion and cohesiveness binding the elements together. This echoes the idea in chaos theory that there is no chaos in the sense of utter disorder, only that the set of considerations is too large for the observer to apprehend.”
About the Artist
Nicoletta Baumeister completed a Diploma of Fine Arts from Langara College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and a specialization in goldsmithing in Pforzheim, Germany. She lives in South Surrey and has exhibited throughout the Lower Mainland. Baumeister’s art practice encompasses realism and, more recently, abstract work. Her current work explores themes related to how we perceive reality through the consideration of the dynamic relationship between an object and the viewer, and how the act of viewing changes the object being viewed.