Thanks to my friend Paul Brower, who works at the Western Gallery at WWU, for alerting me to a super cool art installation coming soon to campus, by South Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh (Photo courtesy of The Stranger):

At first glance, it’s impossible to understand exactly what’s going on in this piece. Sure, it looks amazing, like a tornado made entirely of candy, but thanks to another photo posted at The Stranger, it’s clear that there’s much more to the piece, titled Cause & Effect, than that:

Wow. That’s a lot of little orange men! Let’s see what the artist intends it all to mean (via WWu Office of Communications):

“’Cause & Effect’ evokes a vicious tornado. This vast ceiling installation is a composition of densely hung strands that anchor thousands of figures clad in colors resembling a Doppler reading stacked atop one another,” said Do Ho Suh, adding that the artwork is a “physical realization of existence, suggesting strength in the presence of numerous individuals. The work is an attempt to decipher the boundaries between a single identity and a larger group, and how the two conditions coexist.”

The artwork at Western metaphorically places the individual within an intricate web of destiny and fate. “It comes from a belief that every individual is spawned from the lives he/she may have lived previously. The vertical context of the figures becomes a collection of past influences, and again, begins to define the inherent powers and energies that characterize an individual,” he said.

It strikes me that no photos can really duplicate the experience of actually viewing Cause & Effect on site, so I’m really looking forward to spending time with it when it arrives.