Walking on water with orange-covered polyethylene

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New York artist Christo opens “The Floating Piers” in Italy this weekend through 3 July, taking plastic and nylon to a grand scale. During the life-size test at Montecolino, Christo is delighted as the piers undulate in October 2015 with the waves on Lake Iseo in Italy. (Photo: Wolfgang Volz)

HOUSTON (ICIS)–One of the more unique polymer projects of the age will enable a few hundred thousand people to walk on water soon at a lake in Italy.

For only about two weeks, though.

The latest project by New York artist Christo – “The Floating Piers” – will last for only 16 days, 18 June-3 July.

Creating a nearly 5-mile-long walkway on Lake Iseo in northern Italy, the project consists of 220,000 high-density polyethylene (HDPE) cubes covered with 70,000 square metres of orange nylon fabric.

On the project’s website, the 81-year-old Christo explains that those who walk on the piers will feel like they’re walking on “the back of a whale”.

It will also be like walking on a modular boat dock system built the way a Lego kit is assembled. The walkway, made of white HDPE blocks from a factory at nearby Lake Maggiore, is covered in a saffron-coloured fabric made by Geo-Die Luftwerker in Lubeck, Germany.

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Workers manufacture 200,000 HDPE cubes over eight months at a factory in Fondotoce at Lago Maggiore, Italy. (Photo: Wolfgang Vol)

Susan Freinkel, author of “Plastic: A Toxic Love Story,” published in 2011, says Christo is a link to pop and public artists of the 1960s such as Andy Warhol and Klaus Oldenburg, who both worked with plastic at some point.

“Partly because it’s so malleable, because it’s, you know, plastic,” Freinkel said. “You can use it to create environments, which is what Christo is doing.”

Those who believe art is timeless are not on the same page with Christo, whose website says he and late wife, Jeanne-Claude, “changed the concept of ‘public art’ by creating temporary works that are truly transitory by design”.

The Bulgarian-born Christo (last name, Javacheff) has made a career out of temporary or perishable art, most of it using plastic in a big way. He is the most famous of a cadre of artist “wrappers”, who envelop objects and buildings and trees, even those who work only in bubble-wrap.

But Christo has become by far the world’s best-known plastic wrapper, probably because he wraps only on a grand scale. Some of his most memorable projects include:

● The “Valley Curtain” (1972) installed between two mountains in Colorado, requiring 200,200 square feet of nylon fabric.

● The 24.5-mile “Running Fence” (1976) north of San Francisco, which required 2.15m square feet of nylon fabric.

● “Surrounded Islands” (1983) in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, with 6.5m square feet of PP fabric.

● “Wrapped Pont-Neuf” (1985) in Paris, with 450,000 square feet of polyamide fabric.

● “Wrapped Reichstag” (1995) in Berlin, with over 1m square feet of polypropylene (PP) fabric.

● “The Gates” (2005) in New York’s Central Park, with 1m square feet of nylon fabric for 7,508 panels.

Christo told the New York Times last year that the cost of the Italy project is $11m, which he has already raised from the sale of his art – drawings, preparatory studies and other original works of art from the late 1950s to the present.

He has funded all of his projects this way. Christo does not accept money for posters, postcards, books, films or any other products, no donated labour or volunteer help. He believes doing otherwise would alter and compromise his art, according to his website.

“Refusing this money assures him he is working in total freedom,” the website states.

Throughout his career, Christo has sold his conventional art to support his unconventional wrappings and drapings, though like many successful New York artists he has befriended wealthy backers.

New York art collector and blogger Greg Allen points to the Beretta family in Italy, “which owns the island being connected by the piers”.

Christo has acknowledged the presence of the “the family Beretta” at the lake in news stories on the project, but Allen calls the family a crucial element for the project.

“For all his autonomy, I think that in this case especially, the driving force is the Beretta family, the gun manufacturer,” Allen added.

“The Floating Piers” under construction in March on Lake Iseo, Lombardy, Italy. (Gian Vittorio Frau/REX/Shutterstock)

The Berettas are art collectors for whom art is just one piece of a luxury/glamour/fashion-branded lifestyle, Allen said.

“They want to make #berretalife a thing,” Allen said. “And basking in the glow of a huge Christo project does that in every possible way. So it looks to me that, more than any other Christo project I can think of, ‘Floating Piers’ is meant to function as a branding tool for its main financial backer.”

After 3 July, “The Floating Piers” will be dismantled, with all of the plastic and other materials recycled.

All it will take to see the project is the cost of getting to Italy. There are no tickets to buy for the art installation, no reservations to make.

The walking-on-water part of the trip will be free.

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Christo’s vision, in pencil, wax crayon and enamel paint on an aerial photograph by Wolfgang Volz. (Photo: André Grossmann)

SMALL IMAGE: Christo shown in Oberhausen, Germany, in 2013. (Action Press/REX Shutterstock)

INSET IMAGE: Christo’s plans for “The Floating Piers” provided by his website.