Abstract Mountains

Artists: Marie Khouri
Location: City Centre 2 (9639 137A Street)
Category: Private collection
Developer: Lark Group
Year Installed: 2018

About Abstract Mountains

Made of stainless steel, this abstract sculpture stands near a mixed-use development called City Centre 2. The three silhouettes mirror our beautiful British Columbia mountains in an abstract mountain scape. They were inspired by renowned Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti’s 1934 Cube made of bronze. They also were designed with the building owner’s Feng Shui sensibilities in mind, as mountains represent anchoring and luck. The artist was careful in the selection of materials, saying that the sculptures are “sleek and modern, the fine-sanding finish on the stainless steel reflects light and brings them to life….I like for materials to speak for themselves and not be disguised.”

About the Artist

Marie Khouri has been creating public art for the past fourteen years with installations worldwide. She likes to shift from intricate, worked surfacing to very pure contemporary forms in her pursuit of danger and challenge, pushing the boundaries of herself and her medium. Her work is always site-specific, taking into account history, heritage, and community.

Khouri has led a nomadic life, uprooting from Lebanon to Spain, Canada and then France. She began her career as a language interpreter before completing her course in sculpture at the prestigious L’Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Her experience in formalism and scaling endows her work with an innate and essential structural framework and academic imprint.

She is now based­ in Vancouver and has earned renown for her public sculptures, such as the Canada Line Station sculpture Le Banc, shown at Vancouver Olympic Station as part of the 2011 Vancouver Biennale and permanently acquired by a collector.

Her other public artwork in Surrey is Histoire d'O and Flight of Doves.