Created for the 2010 Biennial of the Americas, Gonzalo Lebrija’s History of Suspended Time: Monument for the Impossible transformed a parking lot across from MCA Denver into a striking public art installation. The work was presented in connection with MCA Denver’s The Energy Effects: Art and Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess, which opened on June 30, 2010, and ran throughout the summer in alignment with Denver’s first Biennial of the Americas celebration.

The installation monumentalized a fleeting moment from an earlier performance in which Lebrija dropped a restored muscle car into a lake and captured the instant just before impact with a high-speed camera. In its sculptural form, the car appeared impossibly suspended on the surface of water, creating the illusion that gravity had paused and time had stopped. Both uncanny and sublime, the work reflected on the automobile as a symbol of modern ambition, excess, energy, and motion, while inviting viewers to consider the tension between destruction and creation, spectacle and stillness.