Shift (sculpture)
Shift is a large outdoor sculpture by American artist Richard Serra, located in King City, Ontario, Canada about 50 kilometers north of Toronto. The work was commissioned in 1970 by art collector Roger Davidson and installed on his family property.Shift consists of six large concrete forms, each 20 centimetres thick and 1.5 metres high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside. In 1990 the Township of King voted to designate Shift and the surrounding land as a protected cultural landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act. The property is now owned by a Toronto-based developer who announced in 2010 that they appeal the decision of the Ontario Conservation Review board with plans to develop the property for housing, necessitating the removal of Shift. In 2013 the Township of King voted to prepare a bylaw to designate Shift as protected under the Ontario Heritage Act, preventing its destruction or alteration.
History
In the summer of 1970 Serra and artist Joan Jonas visited the site, a 13-acre potato farm in King Township. They discovered that if two people walked the distance of the land towards each other while keeping each other in view, they had to negotiate the contours of the land and walked in a zigzagged path. This determined the topographical definition of the space and the finished work would be the maximum distance two people could occupy while still in view of one another. The sculpture's construction began in 1970 and ended in 1972.
