350 N ORLEANS

CNL Projects worked with Chicago artist Ruben Aguirre on two installations for EQ Office’s 350 N Orleans building.

The first involved creating a one-of-a-kind, site-specific artwork for the beautifully designed River Room lounge and meeting space. In researching the site, the artist felt it was important to both recognize and honor the history of the building as a former textile facility. The result is a large-scale, abstract interpretation of fabric, painted directly on the wall and intended to highlight texture, color, folds, patterns and light. The artist views the work as a painted collage, mimicking a fabric’s folds, ripples and movement. He sees textiles as reflective of movement and conductors of energy with the ability to reveal historical references, traditions and stories.

For the second project, Aguirre created the paintings Reinterpreted Landscapes 1–3 for public spaces in the building’s lobby. Both playful and constructed, these works are a series of layers inspired by earth-like elements such as water, sky, rain, and stone. With gestural and calculated spray strokes, they are composed as reinterpreted landscapes. Revealing every layer of the process, like an excavation, the bottom layers peek out and present the illusion that we can see through and between colors. With the medium of spray paint suggestive of graffiti and action painting, each layer builds upon the next, straddling the line of haste and control, while reinterpreting the current landscape of 350 Orleans.