PACE IN SPACE! is a temporary installation as part of the Offsite series and was on view from May 5, 2023 to February 25, 2024.

Offsite is an outdoor public art space in the heart of the city. Presenting an innovative program of temporary projects, it is a site for local and international contemporary artists to exhibit works related to the surrounding urban context. Featured artists consider the site-specific potential of art within the public realm and respond to the changing social and cultural conditions of our contemporary world. New projects are installed in the spring and fall of each year.

Offsite is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and funded by the City of Vancouver through the Public Art Program.

Internationally acclaimed Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ PACE IN SPACE! brings us face to face with a set of creatures that resemble cars with legs. Are they machines or animals or some animatronic hybrid? Cars belong on the street, but these creatures inhabit the sidewalk, existing alongside other two- and four-legged beings. What is happening? Is one lifting its leg to the wall?

For PACE IN SPACE! — installed on a busy downtown thoroughfare amid towering buildings — Reyes has assembled a group of oversized, colourful and playful anthropomorphic critters. Transformers or perhaps frolicking dog- or frog-like creatures engage with the public intellectually and physically, illustrating the complex and rapidly increasing influence of artificial intelligence and machine-learning on our contemporary social fabric. Today, we’re experiencing a worldwide Turing Test in which machines are making art . . . but do they understand it?

Statement courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery.