Feature: World out of time realizes work of great New Zealand artist

A new world is taking shape in a corner of New Zealand -- a vision from the past of the future.

It will see giant "serpents" ringing with static electricity in the world's largest piece of kinetic art, and the world's biggest piece of titanium -- specially forged at a mill in China -- standing upright and ringing when struck like a gong.

Vast metallic "fountains" will revolve in a swaying gleam and a football field-sized clock will chime the hour with Swiss cow bells hanging from 84 swaying "wands."

These fantastical concepts are part of North Island city of New Plymouth's plan to bring to life the works of one of the great artists of the 20th Century.

New Zealander Len Lye first made his name outside his homeland, in the ranks of Europe's Surrealist movement, exhibiting his avant- garde films alongside works by Salvador Dali, Miro and Man Ray.

Now -- 35 years after his death -- a series of project will see many of Lye's gargantuan ideas constructed for the first time.

Central to these will be the new Len Lye Centre, New Zealand's first ever museum dedicated to the work of a single artist, in a specially designed steel-clad building that will open as part of the city's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in July.

Announcing government funding for the center in 2011, then Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Christopher Finlayson said it would house "an internationally significant collection."

PURE FIGURES OF MOTION

Born in Christchurch in 1901, Lye studied the art of New Zealand's indigenous Maori and spent several years in the early 1920s studying indigenous cultures in Australia and South Pacific islands, such as Samoa.

He moved to London the same decade and his artistic breakthrough came when -- lacking the money to hire a camera -- he discovered that he could make films by drawing directly onto celluloid.

He claimed to create "pure figures of motion" by painting, stencilling or scratching on a strip of film.

In the Second World War, Lye turned his expertise to making British propaganda films, but in 1944 he moved to New York where he continued to make films.

In his later years, he was mainly involved in making motorized metal sculptures that vibrated and spun, and these were first exhibited at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1961.

Lye became a U.S. citizen, but he returned to New Zealand in 1977 for an exhibition of his work at the Govett-Brewster, which he described as "the swingingest gallery in the Antipodes."

PERSONAL THEME PARK

Gallery director Simon Rees likens New Plymouth's ambitions for Len Lye to the Spanish city of Barcelona, which is synonymous with the work of architect Antoni Gaudi.

"From the international perspective, it's the film which drives the larger portion of his reputation," Rees told Xinhua in his office in central New Plymouth.

"Within New Zealand, it's the kinetic sculptures that he's best known for. The center, which has a special gallery with a 10-meter high ceiling height and a 62-seat cinema, is the perfect opportunity to marry both aspects of his practice."

Lye was one of the first people to make direct animation by painting or scratching directly on to film stock, said Rees.

His film Tusalava, made in 1929, featured Maori, Aboriginal and Modernist influences and was considered a breakthrough in the history of film internationally.

The centre will house 19,000 items left by Lye on his death in 1980 to the Len Lye Foundation -- to be kept in the care of the Govett-Brewster -- of which about two thirds have been catalogued.

"He has hundreds and hundreds of notebooks and sketches and hundreds of watercolors and hundreds of drawings -- so there's also an archive and research unit in there and there are many more years of discoveries to be made within boxes and boxes of material that we have," said Rees.

These include Lye's plans for vast sculptures, including "a theme park to himself -- a total environment on the scale of a world fair."

FINDING THE MEANS

Lye acknowledged he would never see the realization of many of his ideas.

"My work, I think, is going to be pretty good for the 21st Century," Lye famously said. "Why the 21st is simply that there won't be the means until then -- I don't think there'll be the means to have what I want."

New Plymouth businessman John Matthews has been instrumental in realizing Lye's visions, and has committed hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to both the center and his own tribute to the artist.

Matthews, who worked with Lye as a young engineer in the 1970s, is deeply involved in the technicalities of the works.

He believes the Len Lye Centre will be "a sort of temple, a Len Lye temple," comparable to the famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

"They make real statements, so you think of Bilbao, you think of Guggenheim and people go there whether they're artists or not. The same thing will happen here without a doubt," Matthews told Xinhua at his company offices.

STRIKING BLADES

The attractions will include a "tableau" of Lye's Blade -- an upright titanium blade that rotates and oscillates and is struck by a ball on a striker creating various harmonics.

A meter-high blade was first created, followed by Big Blade, standing 2.5 meters high and weighing 35 kg, made in Russia from what was then the world's largest piece of titanium.

"We're now finished the design and we're underway to build a larger version again and in this case the blade is 5 meters high and weighs 900 kg," said Matthews.

"It'll be the biggest piece of titanium in the world. It's going to made at a mill in China, so there'll be a tableau of these blades: blade, big blade and giant blade.

"That's a giant kinetic sculpture by anybody's standards. There'd be very few pieces in the world of this size and I'm not aware anything in the world that's got the vigor of this work -- it's an extraordinary piece."

LIGHTNING SERPENTS

But the truly massive ambitions of Lye will live at park that Matthews is creating on his own land on New Plymouth's urban edge.

These include the Swiss cow bells clock and the sea serpent sculpture -- titled "Sun, Land and Sea" -- which will be the largest kinetic sculpture in the world.

It will feature five stainless steel "sea serpents" on a big black slab in a lake, which come alive like flicking ropes with ever-increasing ripples that raise them before a flash of lightning shoots out to the "sun god," a ball suspended above.

The work -- expected to be about 70 meters long and 40 meters high -- will make "an enormous sound and this blue-white flash of lightning," he said.

"You get retinal retention so you see the lightning carried on in your eyeballs for a while."

FREE THINKER

Like many who came into contact with Lye, Matthews is still mesmerized by the man he describes as a free thinker.

"He had no education so he self-educated. He developed an incredible ability for looking outside the square, being innovative in his mind, being creative. He had a whole lot of admirable characteristics. He invented in a sense his own language. He was an extraordinary individualist," said Matthews.

"In the art world, he's very well known and of course he's accessible to everybody, so it doesn't matter what your gender is, what your ethnic background is, or your age -- kids get hooked on Len as well as adults -- so he speaks for himself."

A 45-meter-high Len Lye sculpture known as the Wind Wand has become an iconic city landmark since it was erected on the central city waterfront in 2000, and more public works are planned for the city's airport and coastline.

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery has already begun to offer its expertise to other holders of Lye's work, including the British Film Institute and the Imperial War Museum in London and the Berkley Art Museum, the Pacific Film Archive, MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Albright-Knox Gallery in the United States.

New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd said the iconic Len Lye Center building and the works within would mark New Plymouth out as a cultural and creative draw for international visitors.

It has also been promised the promotional support of the national carrier, Air New Zealand, Judd told Xinhua by phone.

"The artist himself was ahead of his time," said Judd. "We have a strong arts and culture scene and this is an opportunity to share a unique building and the works inside." Endi