This year's site-specific project in the Olympic Sculpture Park's PACCAR Pavilion was created by Los Angeles-based artist Geoff McFetridge. Within the graphic design community McFetridge is well known for imagery that is extremely economical and spare yet powerfully communicative. Rooted in modernist graphic sensibilities, his work is also firmly planted in the world of today and engages in commentary about the environment, society, philosophy and youth culture. He was the art director for the influential magazine Grand Royal (connected with the hip-hop group Beastie Boys) and has done graphic work for Burton Snowboards, ESPN, Nike, Stussy and Milk Fed, as well as fabric and print designs for fashion designer Marc Jacobs.
The public nature of the PACCAR Pavilion seems to perfectly suit McFetridge's poster-based provocations. He treats the giant wall in the pavilion as an oversized bulletin board, complete with out-of-scale thumbtacks. The motifs and posters he developed for the space echo the concerns of many of the sculptures in the park, such as the relationship between man-made and natural forms, the interplay between two- and three-dimensional space, visual conundrums, and the arbitrariness of boundaries between different cultural practices.
âMichael Darling, Former Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art