For a limited time of two weeks, Sunset Pacific Motel aka. Bates Motel was painted white by French artist Vincent Lamouroux to bring attention to this building before it gets demolished at the end of this year. It has been abandoned for nearly twenty years, and most passersby didn’t even give the place a second glance since the halted operation.
Because the building is going to disappear, Lamouroux decided to paint the space entirely white to indicate its removal. This way, witnesses will be forced to look at such conspicuous building.
With Projection, there aren’t any clues or statements of the story behind the venue, nor is there an entry to the site. This leads passersby to either search online or instill their own meaning of this building.
The huge hurdle of Instagrammers congregating on the street slowed down the traffic around the area just for this temporary piece. As fleeting and minimal this impact may be, there was a momentary beauty with what he achieved. With this piece, he deliberately created something that was thought provoking in such a simple way.
The attention seeking means in which he took was a brilliant way to bring some love back to the building before its destruction and I just wanted to write in celebratory to that.
Like many other instagrammers, I took quite a number of photos of this building with my lovely boyfriend. These photos will commemorate the last of what people will remember Bate Motel as, so I wanted to really seize this opportunity and be grateful for being able to partake the experience of what Lamouroux intended for this building.
As you may have already noticed, we were festive and dressed accordingly to match the art piece. In fact, we saw many do the same, which led me to realize that most didn’t just stumble upon this find, but like us, made definitive plans to participate in this visual experience.
I was pretty inspired by the number of people I saw coming to this site that day. There was a variety of peculiar characters I spotted from groups that color coordinated with helium inflated balloons to photo enthusiast high school kiddos that hired some platinum hair model with sky high heels for this event.
Then came the idea for me a to create an All White inspired lookbook. Blogposts showcasing these looks will be posted shortly.
Photos by Nathaniel Unger// Instagram @nathaniel_thomas_
