Highway Junction 14-5

Yutaka Sone, using a wide variety of media and a singularly poetic vocabulary, transforms the commonplace into a spectacle. Highway Junction 14-5 is one in a series of topographical marble sculptures of freeway interchanges that the artist created after moving to Los Angeles in 2000. Working from aerial photographs of the highway and videotapes of the surrounding environs, he assembled a scale model from cardboard and foam and enlisted Chinese craftsmen to execute the marble relief. The material ironically highlights the motorway’s status as a defining feature of Los Angeles culture. Its delicate nature and intricate detail transforms the crossroads into an object of beauty and wonder; in fact, the artist refers to its looping form as a “flower in bloom.”