Ugo Rondinone is a New York-based mixed-media artist from Switzerland with an international reputation for a body of work that is endlessly inventive and poetic. For Nasher XChange, Rondinone designed a wooden pier, finished in vibrant colors and installed at Fish Trap Lake in West Dallas. Rondinone, who grew up near a lake in Switzerland, was interested in experiences unique to a pier. He described how the artwork enouraged poetic, romantic and contemplative moments by offering a chance for visitors to transition from land to water as they walked the length of the structure. The pier faced west so that visitors could experience sunset with the intense colors of the sky reflected on the surface of the water around them.

Fish Trap Lake is a small body of water on a 30-acre site owned by the Dallas Housing Authority, just minutes from downtown Dallas. It is surrounded by several schools, a YMCA, a Girls Inc. of Metropolitan Dallas location, a Dallas Public Library branch, and a senior living community. The site originally was part of La Reunion, a utopian community of French, Belgian and Swiss settlers founded in the 1850s. The lake and adjacent cemetery are named for the fishing technique used by the colony in the nearby Trinity River.