Electro-Rainbow
LOTHAR GÖTZ, 2022
As part of Canary Wharf’s Pride celebrations, we have commissioned artist Lothar Götz to create this colourful mural in celebration of LGBTQ+ culture.
Lothar Götz is renowned for works that use the language of abstraction to remake, play with and shift viewers’ readings of architecture and space. His work often references the colour theories of the Bahaus as well as memories from Götz’s own childhood of Baroque churches and 1970s modernist bungalows in Southern Germany where he grew up. Electro-Rainbow is a site-specific response to the grid of glass panels that make up the wall surface. It takes colours from the Progress Pride Rainbow Flag, incorporating them and adapting the stripes into a shifting rainbow mix of coloured triangles arranged within the square panels.
The artist also sees the work akin to the floor of a disco or club, with the patterns and colours dancing across the surface like rays of light on a dancefloor. This provides an echo of the importance of club culture in the development of LGBTQ+ identities.
Despite the bright colours it is also important to note the dark side of gay oppression. The pink triangle within the design also references the mark used to identify homosexuals interned in Nazi concentration camps.