And there you have it! The second edition of CLOUD has been installed successfully at Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow. The above image, and most of the below images, are from the Opening Night of Art Experiment on January 2, 2013. Wayne and I took most of these photos, so feel free to re-post them with a photo credit, if you like.

After three weeks of welding, bulbing, glueing, and managing worker bees, CLOUD is finally up in Moscow! Wayne and I are pleased as punch. It’s been five days since Art Experiment opened, and so far the show has been sold out and there haven’t been any (significant) complications. We’re learning slowly to budget for the occasional chain breakage and problematic sockets, but despite being miniature powers of destruction, Russian kids are immensely excited about CLOUD.

CLOUD at Garage offers a quality that the original piece at Nuit Blanche in Calgary didn’t offer: because the piece is up for 3-weeks instead of 6-hours, audiences are able to have a very unique, individual relationship with the sculpture. It’s interesting to watch one person at a time stand underneath CLOUD, turning on and off light bulbs.

Of course, there are pros and cons. Because CLOUD is the Centerpiece of Art Experiment, it’s located in the central space between all the other exhibits in the show. Everyone needs to pass through the CLOUD Room to enter any of the other spaces (seen above with keys on each door), and so audiences are able to spend some quality time with the piece. While it’s fascinating for people to be able to participate with the work and have time to observe its various aesthetic qualities, certain people (COUGH little kids COUGH) have time to mutate from awed art-viewers, into happy-go-lucky playground terrors, hanging from pull-chains like monkeys at the zoo. This is objectively adorable, but children are unexpectedly strong, and the Garage staff has a small mountain of maintenance ahead of them after each and every show. I exaggerate, however there’s something to be said for one-time-only viewership in the middle of a well-behaved crowd. Nonetheless, broken pull-chains would indicate that CLOUD in Russia is a hit – especially for ages 2 – 9!!

Still, next time Wayne and I are at Garage, we’re going to poke some grown-ups into unadulterated play.