Every season ICA commissions an artist to create a new site-specific temporary work for the Ramp that links the first and second floor galleries. A transitional space, the Ramp is 52 feet long and is visible from the street through architecturally-scaled picture windows on the building’s façade. Especially when it is illuminated at night, each of the commissioned works transforms the Ramp into a window onto ICA’s innovative program of contemporary art. Since the series began in 2000, the Ramp has been a site for a diverse range of creative approaches, including wall paintings by Ingrid Calame, Arturo Herrera, and Amy Sillman; environmental installations by Virgil Marti and Judy Pfaff; a light and sound piece by Nadine Robinson; an on-going conceptual project by Alexandra Mir; and most recently, street photography by Zoe Strauss.

Because every Ramp project is a commission, created specifically for the space, it is impossible to know what exactly will be on view, until the work is completed. Based on a site visit, Irene Fortuyn’s preliminary plan responds to the tree visible through the Ramp’s picture windows. The installation will involve tree branches, cut during the spring and cast in bronze. Natural branching in the tree limbs will create an abstract pattern on the walls of the Ramp, which will also be colored and patterned with fireplace ashes. Handmade colored streamers will change daily according to the day of the week.

Fortuyn makes work about the disposition of place. Cool and intelligent, her installations, sculptures, books, public artworks, and drawings create spaces where psychological and emotional effects can be loosened, more freely associated, or contrasted.
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