NextStop Blog

If you’ve ever traveled across the mezzanine walkway at the Skinker MetroLink Station, you’ve seen the Metro Arts In Transit artwork lit up in LED lights and have heard the corresponding sounds.

Have you ever wondered who’s behind this captivating digital delivery?

Erwin Redl is the internationally recognized artist who created Speed Shift, the public art piece at the Skinker Station. His work and expertise in digital medium recently gained more attention at two high-profile art shows in Miami this month, and will continue to turn heads as part of an exhibit in South Korea this winter.

Redl’s Dial White-Red, White-Blue 2015 LED light painting microprocessor artwork was showcased in the Carl Solway Gallery at the Pulse Miami Beach art show, which ran from December 1 to December 5 in Miami Beach. His work was also featured at Art Miami last week as part of the Arthur Roger Gallery. Art Miami is one of the most important annual contemporary art events in the United States, attracting more than 82,000 collectors, curators, museum professionals and art enthusiasts to Miami each December.

Redl’s work will cross the Pacific Ocean from Miami to Seoul, South Korea, where he will showcase his work as part of the exhibition “Spatial Illumination – 9 Lights in 9 Rooms” in the Daelim Museum’s new venue, the D Museum. That exhibition will run from December 6 to the end of March.

Speed Shift was installed at the Skinker MetroLink Station in 2006. The piece showcases thousands of LED lights and an audio component that emits mechanical beeping sounds. The sequence of lights move horizontally across two large screens located at each end of the mezzanine walkway.

The sequencing of light and sound stand as a metaphor for the rhythm of trains constantly coming and going at defined intervals, according to David Allen, Director of Metro Arts in Transit. St. Louis is among eight cities around the nation with Speed Shift art pieces.

“The artwork Erwin has been able to produce continues to amaze me,” Allen said. “He is one of the few artists I know who have been able to use the bare basics of technology to create something so beautiful in the most minimalist sense.”