The Chambers Hotel

Ok, my year end audit work is winding down and I have a little time, so here are the pictures that I promised earlier. For photo credits, see Flickr

This is a good look at the courtyard. In the foreground is the random, large gorilla staring down at his severed arm. It's bizarre really. Behind the great ape, you can see a bunch of people standing around an open flame. This was basically a big gas bonfire. It was a nice feature because it was damn cold out there. Finally, in the far background, you can see a blue rectangle. That's a view into the ice bar. It was a small bar where everything was made entirely out of ice - the bar, the bottle holders, everything.

This is right inside the front doors. I spent a lot of time in this room while I waited for my team in the mornings. I really liked the red painting, but it's hard to see in this picture. It has a solid red background and a woman dressed all in red. (a slightly different shade of red) It had a subtle contrast that made it really cool. The other painting/photo in this shot was a parody of a famous work, but I can't remember what it was called. It was a social commentary on the obsession with power and wealth in Japan. Every time I looked at it, I noticed something new.

This is a look inside the stairwell. There is a very cool 5 story painting on all four walls. I'd have to say that it was the most artistic stairwell that I've ever been in.

This was the creepiest piece in the whole place. Right inside the entrance was this huge, lifelike head and shoulders. There's not much else to say about this thing other than it was scary how lifelike it looked.

A view of the main entrance. To the right you can see the front doors. Right in the middle of the shot is the big open flame that greets you when you walk in. It was actually pretty nice when coming in from the cold. Mounted on the wall is a plasma TV that displayed nothing but a loop of digital video. It was a very cool scene of people in a restaurant. It was a scene frozen in time. A woman in the foreground is laughing, a woman in the background is holding her head in her hands, and a man is smoking. Everything is completely still except for the man's cigarette. A plume of smoke rises from it as it slowly burns. The scene goes until the cigarette is completely burned... then it starts over again. I watched it a few times...

This is a fairly representative view of the hallways, but it's really missing impact of just how many TVs are in this place. All the hallways were lined with TVs that displayed continuous loops of random, often trippy and weird, digital art.
And lastly, some random guy sitting in some random room...
I just wanted to show a sample room. This doesn't show much, but you can see the big desk, unique art, and spacious windows that each room sports. They were big and quite nice room.

So there you have it - a guided tour through the Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis. It was a very cool place filled with lots of fun art, but after spending a month there, I was happy to leave.