Art in the Parks

Description:

The Art Students League of New York, one of America’s premier art schools, presents the Model to Monument Program (M2M), a collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation that has culminated in the installation of the monumental sculpture, Flock, at Van Cortlandt Park.

The sculpture was created by an international team of seven selected League students during a nine-month program led by master sculptor Greg Wyatt. In its third year, ASL created a 15-foot swirl of birds in flight—making note of the amazing bird watching opportunity in the Bronx park. Flock, a collaborative piece also uses the birds to represent the diversity of the Bronx. Included in the exhibition are Beñat Iglesias Lopez, Anna Kuchel Rabinowitz, Anne Stanner, Sherwin Banfield, John N. Erianne, Reina Kubota, and Morito Yasumitsu.

A collaborative installation created by the team is also on concurrently on view in Riverside South Park in Manhattan. This exhibition is presented with the Art Students League.

Description:
Three large fish heads, including a lane snapper, a yellow tail snapper and a rock hind, sprout from the corner of this slopping lawn bordered by the Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.  All three species are found in local fish markets throughout Brooklyn. The fish live in tropical waters such as the Caribbean and are transported to New York City for human consumption. By enlarging them and placing them on the grass, they are taken even further out of context.

This project is presented by Two Trees Development.

Description:

The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership presents Tomorrow, a temporary installation by Akihiro Ito. From September 27, 2012 through August 2013, the piece will be installed at the northeast corner of Fort Greene Park (Myrtle and Washington Park).

Akihiro Ito’s sculpture, Tomorrow, illustrates the harmony between humans and their natural surroundings, and reminds us of the importance of preserving our environment. Tomorrow is made of 600 pieces of laminated dimensional wood (Douglas fir) which form the shape of a baby – a symbol of future generations. He used this material to draw the connection between people and nature. Wood is environmentally friendly as it emits no pollutants, is a familiar resource that has been utilized for millennia, and instills feelings of warmth, serenity, and relief in people. Mr. Ito says, “Nowadays, we are facing serious environmental problems such as global warming, waste and resource depletion. We have to preserve nature and save our earth for our future generations and for all living beings. I hope this sculpture provides an opportunity for people to think about humanity’s connection to nature, and reminds us that we are all part of earth’s family.”

“Bringing sculpture to Myrtle Avenue is part of the Partnership’s larger public art initiative to underscore the neighborhood’s creative spirit and highlight our public spaces with art,” says Meredith Phillips Almeida, the Partnership’s Deputy Director. Throughout the duration of the installation, an informational card about the artist and work, designed by the Partnership, will be available at the site. The Partnership will also develop a site visit guide for local schools.

Please visit the Partnership’s website for more information about the organization and their initiatives.

Description:

Public Walks Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
Free admission. Advance reservations required, RESERVE ONLINE!

High Line Art presents Caterpillar by artist Carol Bove, a HIGH LINE COMMISSION featuring seven sculptures that punctuate the wild landscape on the High Line at the Rail Yards, the third and final section of the High Line. Bove’s commission is the last opportunity to see this section of the elevated railway in its natural state before it opens as public parkland in 2014. The commission will be viewable during public walks on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays until May 2014. Advance reservations are required. Admission is free and reservations can be made online.

For the High Line, Bove continues her research on the role and function of art in the public space, by creating seven new sculptures which are installed within the self-seeded landscape on the High Line at the Rail Yards. Bove’s site-specific installation highlights the uniqueness of its location and opens a magical environment for viewers. Installed along a 300-yard stretch of the untouched terrain of the High Line, Bove’s sculptures reveal themselves among the unruly vegetation, like mysteriously pristine ruins of a lost civilization or a contemporary version of a Zen garden. Abstract shapes and enigmatic forms are carefully placed along the High Line, creating a unique viewing experience surrounded by the wilderness of the High Line and the stunning views of the Hudson River.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line

Image credit: Carol Bove, Celeste, 2013. Part of the HIGH LINE COMMISSION Caterpillar. On view at the High Line at the Rail Yards. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of Friends of the High Line.

Description:

High Line Art is pleased to announce Busted, the HIGH LINE COMMISSION that includes figurative sculptures, celebratory portraits, and commemorative monuments installed on and around the High Line. Featuring nine acclaimed international artists, Busted will be on view from April 2013 to April 2014.

Drawing its inspiration from the dedicatory sculptures that punctuated the streets of ancient Rome, Busted plays with the popular tradition of urban monuments and civic landmarks that have defined public spaces for centuries. Who are today's heroes and who does the public expect to see memorialized in monuments? Busted will raise some of these questions by bringing together a group of artists who are questioning the tradition of commemorative sculpture and the format of the celebratory monuments. The invited artists will touch upon – at times with levity and sense of humor – issues of democracy, taste, and representation of the self in the public space.

Busted will feature nine international artists including: Frank Benson, Steven Claydon, George Condo, Mark Grotjahn, Sean Landers, Goshka Macuga, Ruby Neri, Amalia Pica, and Andra Ursuta.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line

Description:

Visible to Roosevelt Island Tram riders, Queensborough Bridge commuters, and pedestrians, Hosea, a 15 foot tall steel and iron sculpture, features an enormous railroad gear that is supported by a tripod of wavy steel legs. This gear refers beautifully to the working yellow gear in the mechanical section of the tram, clearly visible from the park. Eisner found the gear in a scrap yard and placed it at the apex of the sculpture to “celebrate its form and strength,” rather than its industrial past. The three legs straddle the decorative paved element in the center of the park and allow ample space for viewers to perambulate under and around the sculpture.

This exhibition is presented by Susan Eley Fine Art.

Description:

Cheryl Farber Smith’s Mellow Yellow is as fun as its name. The nine-foot tall aluminum sculpture is a playful piece that juxtaposes the most basic of all visual elements –geometric shapes. Painted a brilliant yellow, the sculpture is comprised of suspended circles, cylinders and cubes that take part in an animated dance. Centrally located in Tribeca Park (also known as Beach Street Park), this sculpture will brighten the heavily canopied plaza. Smith, who exhibited her sculpture Leaning Firm in Brooklyn’s Columbus Park in 2007, also explores similar themes in her photographic prints.

Description:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars is part of a progression from a series of smaller sculptures Henricksen made out of porcelain. The porcelain series started in 2010 with a show at John Connelly Presents in Chelsea and the Brooklyn Museum acquired one of these sculptures in 2011. Awry and gnarled, Henricksen’s tree trunks are riddled with arborglyphs, delivering messages that speak of human behavior, while conveying both distress and conviction. The quote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars is found in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere's Fan.

Description:

Jaehyo Lee’s continues his signature use of crosscuts of Korean big-cone pine. For this work, the artist meticulously carved, shaped, and burned the circular wood slabs that are attached to a steel armature reminiscent of an 18-foot tall champagne flute. Lee is particularly interested in highlighting the “beauty in what is seen but not noticed.” LOTUS is a minimalistic approach to a monumental sculpture that exposes the nature of his materials, including the natural texture and character of the wood grain. Lee’s is the eighteenth public artwork to be exhibited in Union Square Park, seven of which including LOTUS at the southeast triangle.

This project is presented with Cynthia Reeves PROJECTS and the Union Square Partnership.

Description:

Three sculptures by artist Alan Binstock are on view in Ft. Tryon Park—Wayfinder, located across from the New Leaf Café, and Third Portal and Trance Ender, found along the Stan Michels Promenade. Made of resin, shattered tempered glass and steel, all three pieces appear to be tools offering direction or pathways to discovery and (inner) navigation.

These sculptures are appropriately placed along the promenade that overlooks the Heather Garden, so the natural colors of the garden are reflected in Binstock’s luminous sculptures.

Alan Binstock also worked as a jeweler, carpenter, cabinetmaker, and taught yoga, verging close to a monastic life in an ashram community. Binstock currently works as an architect at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He finds the continued exposure to near and deep space images, as well as Eastern metaphysics, powerful influences on his work. Wayfinder borrows and interprets the forms of ancient armillaries and astrolabes, as well as Hubble imagery. Mantras and words of peace are inscribed in the outer ring and the center is composed of shattered tempered glass and dyed resin that catches the light that shines through the trees overhead. Trance Ender was inspired by the idea of energy centers (chakras) referenced in Eastern philosophies. With an interest in transmitting these ideas, Binstock mimicked the form of transmission towers. His new sculpture, Third Portal is also made of colorful shattered glass and caste resins that resemble the rotating cosmos.

Description:
Individuals is composed of 15 bronze sculptures that are all unique, but similar in form. Made specifically for the park, “these individual figurative forms come together as a close community, yet it is always to be remembered that it is the individual that makes our world a place of justice and compassion,” says Andrew Rogers.  It is a particularly apt theme that resonates with this location, the gateway for the United Nations. Rogers uses bronze for these twelve-foot individuals, a material weighted in the history of art, but used in a light, contemporary manner for this exhibition. The organic, ribbed outer surfaces act as counterpoints to the delicate, highly polished sculpture interiors. Each piece is balanced on a tightly curled base that unfurls as it extends upwards and outward in a continuously undulating spiral movement—similar to that of a tornado or a blooming flower.

Description:

Orly Genger’s monumental commission entitled Red, Yellow and Blue features the artist’s renowned usage of intricately hand-knotted nautical rope covered in paint, creating a work that transforms the park’s lush lawns into colorfully-lined chambers. Following its New York run, the installation will travel to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside of Boston in October 2013, marking the first Mad. Sq. Art commission to tour.

Genger’s work artfully transcends the perceived limits of the materials she employs. This Mad. Sq. Art commission consists of 1.4 million feet of rope—the total length equating to nearly 20 times the length of Manhattan—covered in over 3,000 gallons of paint, and weighing over an astounding 100,000 pounds. Red, Yellow and Blue employs repurposed rope collected from hundreds of miles up and down the Eastern seaboard, bringing elements of the coastline to the urban setting of Madison Square Park. Together, three separate undulating structures of layered rope shaped on-site by the artist redefines the landscape of the park, creating interactive environments that invite visitors to explore both exposed and hidden spaces, encouraging them to navigate and experience Madison Square Park anew.

This exhibition is presented by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Description:

Roman Standard features a single bronze bird perched on top of a thirteen-foot pole that rises over the park. Often mistaken as a real bird, Tracey Emin describes the sculpture is a symbol of “hope, faith and spirituality” that serves as a point of contemplation. The sculpture serves as a reinterpretation of the militaristic symbols of traditional Roman Standards by demonstrating a seemingly insignificant creature’s strengths in its embodiment of height, air and light. “Most public sculptures are a symbol of power which I find oppressive and dark,” said Emin. “I wanted something that had a magic and an alchemy, something which would appear and disappear and not dominate.”

This exhibition is presented by Art Production Fund, Lehmann Maupin and White Cube.

Description:

The Jackson Square Alliance presents Selections From The Modern Landscape (Jackson Square) by artist Kenneth Pietrobono. This commissioned project uses botanical signage to rename the existing plant life of historic Jackson Square Park to reflect the narratives and dynamics of its cultural environment.

With names such as Displacement, Pleasure and Class Barrier, Pietrobono works to acknowledge the complex forces at play in Jackson Square and its adjoining neighborhoods while creating space for consideration, understanding and thought on the public’s role in the modern landscape.

While many of the elements may prove challenging, by aligning them with the calm, neutral presence of the natural environment, Pietrobono encourages a tone of honesty, patience and empathy. In conjunction with the installation, the artist will be present at scheduled times to engage with the public through discussion and response. Detailed information may be found online.

This exhibition is presented by the Jackson Square Alliance

Description:

Brooklyn-based artist Virginia Overton is known for her sculptures that incorporate raw materials and found objects, often using and re-using elements until they naturally decay. For High Line Art, Overton will transform an old pickup truck into a sculpture installed on the stacked parking next to the High Line at West 20th Street.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line

Description:

Towering in cast bronze, it is astonishing that Thomas Schütte’s United Enemies has its origins in a series of small figures the artist made with modeling clay in the early 1990s. Schütte (b. 1954, Oldenburg, Germany) conceived the series during a residency in Italy at a time when several politicians had been arrested for corruption. These figures, however, are mythical characters rather than specific individuals. Their paired forms are highly abstracted, with heads emerging from swaddling robes that conceal their limbs. Faces are aged and anguished, rendered in soft focus to suggest the waning power of would-be patriarchs. In contrast, the tightly knotted rope that binds them is sharply detailed, drawing the figures – and our eyes – into focus.

Monumental bronze statuary is among the most traditional forms of public art. The artist’s choice of Central Park for the display of this work places it in dialogue with that tradition. With typical inventiveness, Schütte has taken a conventional form and made it relevant. His colossal figures do not stand heroically atop a classical pedestal but seem to stagger, earthbound, on tripods of bundled poles. Struggling to be rid of its mate, each figure is nevertheless incapable of standing alone. They have become potent contemporary metaphors: sculpted giants that simultaneously resonate with the mythological, the political, and the personal.

This exhibition is presented by the Public Art Fund.

Description:

Can Altay's Inner Space Station, 2013, is a territorial marker in the form of a circular bench. Altay's work draws on the limits of public space by creating a temporary inner space that is a simple gesture towards introspection. Inner Space Station is a circle, approximately six feet in diameter, made of concrete, just high and deep enough to make a quiet park bench. Regardless of the direction one is facing while sitting on the sculpture, there is the unavoidable aspect of positioning oneself either on the inside or on the outside. This simple gesture of proposing a boundary as a resting place expands to wider philosophical concerns of what is permitted, where and when.

This exhibition is presented by Protocinema.

Description:

El Anatsui, the celebrated contemporary artist based in Nigeria, is known for his monumental wall tapestries, which are intricately composed of metallic bottle caps culled from discarded Nigerian liquor bottles and woven together with copper wire. For High Line Art, the artist will present a newly-configured installation of Broken Bridge, a monumental drapery made of pressed tin and mirrors, which will hang on an outdoor wall adjacent to the park. Composing a stunning visual of wave-like patterns and folds, the work will reflect the surrounding landscape and mark the artist’s first outdoor installation in the United States.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line.

Description:

Alexandre Arrechea’s No Limits, a new site-specific installation transforms New York City’s famed Park Avenue with 10 large scale sculptures embodying New York’s most prominent buildings. Iconic landmarks represented include: Chrysler Building, Citicorp Center, Empire State Building, Flatiron building, Helmsley Building, MetLife Building, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, Seagram Building, Sherry Netherland, and US Courthouse. The sculptures, which will appear to roll, wind, and spin their way down Park Avenue from 54th to 67th Street, reach towering heights of up to 20 feet.

No Limits by Alexandre Arrechea is presented by Magnan Metz Gallery in conjunction with New York City’s Department of Parks & Recreation, and the Fund for the Park Avenue Sculpture Committee.

Description:

In its second consecutive year, The Art Students League of New York’s “Model to Monument” program will return to Riverside South with seven new sculptures designed by its students. These accomplished artists, though quite varied in their chosen themes and media, are addressing the over-arching theme of flux.  This emerged naturally during the course of discussions about what the participating artists find unique and inspirational in the public space of Riverside Park. Included in the exhibition are Sequoya Aono, Roberto Franzone, HakSul Lee, Damien Armondo Vera, Olga Rudenko, Michael Cloud Hirschfeld, and Renata Pugh.

A collaborative installation created by the team is also on concurrently on view in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The sculpture titled, Mask, by M2M’s previous roster, has been altered- revamping the object into a new work they call, BioMask- a more tree like version of last year’s monumental sculpture.

This work was made possible by the Art Students League’s Model to Monument Program and the Riverside Park Fund.

Description:

Her Nuclear Waters, an 11' x 28' image by artist Chitra Ganesh, is the newest installment of the Park’s ongoing Broadway Billboard series. Chitra Ganesh’s drawing-based practice seeks to excavate buried narratives typically excluded from official canons of history, literature, and art. Her installation, text-based work, and collaborations dissect mythologies and layer disparate visual languages, inviting the viewer to consider alternate narratives of femininity, sexuality, and power as untold stories rise to the surface. Ganesh’s works harness a broad range of visual referents, drawing equally from German expressionism and Japanese woodblock prints, and contemporary visual idioms such as psychedelic print culture, anime, and comics. Her projects are also shaped via an engagement with literary narrative in its many forms: folk and fairy tales, song lyrics, science fiction, and mythology. In this process, the figures is fractured, multiplied, obscured, and distorted, offering points of rupture as potent sites of social and sexual transgression, contemplation, and transformation.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park

Description:

Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York are pleased to announce the selection of Toshihiro Oki architect for tree wood as the winner of this year’s “Folly” competition – an extraordinary opportunity for emerging architects and designers to experiment and build large-scale projects for outdoor exhibition.

tree wood will be a rigid yet airy geometrical wooden structure placed within a grove of trees – a lush and dense area at Socrates Sculpture Park. Visitors will peer into the structure through the floor beams where a formal, ornate chandelier will be suspended. The installation creates a dialogue between built structures and systems with the irregular and organic.

Toshihiro Oki architect consists of team members Toshihiro Oki, Jen Wood and Jared Diganci.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York

Description:

In collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI), Socrates Sculpture Park presents do it (outside), an exhibition conceived of and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. With historical antecedents in Dada and Fluxus, do it (outside) is a selection of artists' instructions interpreted by other artists, performers, community groups, and the public. In the last 20 years, versions of do it have been presented in over 50 venues worldwide, giving new meaning to the concept of the “Exhibition in Progress.” do it (outside) at Socrates Sculpture Park will be the first presentation of the exhibition in New York City and the first to be presented completely outdoors in a public art venue.

The instructions and resulting works will be presented in and around a site-specific design by Christoff : Finio Architecture, the NY-based architecture and design studio of Taryn Christoff and Martin Finio. Their design includes 587 linear feet of sidewalk bridge that stretches across the grounds to create a pergola, corridor and courtyard within the park.

This 20th-anniversary show premieres a significant number of new instructions along with those from the fir), and have been interpreted by: Korakrit Arunanondchai, Jesus Benavente, Jane Benson & Ajay Kurian, Strauss Bourque-LaFrance, Daniel Bozhkov, Christoff : Finio Architecture, Alison Dell & Rob Swainston, Tamar Ettun, Rachel Fainter, Cathy Fairbanks, Lars Fisk, Luz Fleming, Linda Ganjian, Elissa Goldstone, James Haddrill & Daniel Roberts, Charles Harlan, Rachel Higgins, Chelsea Knight & Jonathan VanDyke, Kat Kohl, Rainy Lehrman, Shaun Leonardo, Marie Lorenz, Katie Mangiardi, Julie Ann Nagle, Rhiannon Platt, Jory Rabinovitz, Birgit Rathsmann, Grayson Revoir, Andrew Ross, Becky Sellinger, Sabrina Shapiro, Nataliya Slinko, Chris Sollars, Jennifer Sullivan, Leonard White, Carmen Winant, Jody Wood, Brian Zegeer, and XXX Coffee, among others.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park

Description:

Brooklyn-based sculptor Heather Rowe investigates the transitional space between architecture, sculpture, and installation through perspectival framing, formal inversion, and material deconstruction. Rowe's latest work, Beyond the Hedges (Slivered Gazebo), is a site-specific installation of mirrors, corridors, and spatial slices presented at Socrates Sculpture Park; it is her first outdoor public artwork.

Beyond the Hedges (Slivered Gazebo) inverts the routine relationships we have with our surroundings by restructuring the familiar and reimagining architectural experiences. While many experience architecture in a state of distraction, Beyond the Hedges invites us to focus beyond our current space. Rowe interprets the traditional gazebo or trellis—structures typically placed within a park to frame picturesque views—as a sliced and cropped dimensional space that, sandwiched between pieces of plywood, becomes the framed view. Inspired by Peter Joel Harrison’s illustrated book Gazebos and Trellises, the plywood shapes suspend fragile moments of the garden pavilion, frozen in precarious states of decay or undoing. Complicating the internal network of latticework are mirrored insertions, offering an active relationship to the natural surrounds and Park visitors.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park

Description:

As part of EXPO 1: New York, MoMA PS1, in partnership with Volkswagen and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, is providing a temporary geodesic dome that serves as a center for culture, education, and community in the Rockaways. As a flexible space, the dome provides a venue for a library, lectures and conversations, rotating art exhibitions, film and video screenings, performances, and community events. Programming will be undertaken in partnership with local organizations in the Rockaways and Queens County.

This exhibition is presented by MoMA PS1

Watch It's My Park: VW Dome 2

Description:

After making stops in Times Square and DUMBO, Situ Studio’s Heartwalk is returning to the Rockaways.

Heartwalk- the 30-foot heart constructed from Hurricane Sandy salvaged boardwalk in the Rockaways and Atlantic City- embodies the collective experience of Hurricane Sandy and the love that binds people together during trying times. Whether it was the radically reconfigured landscapes, the compromised infrastructural networks, or the temporary solutions that emerged in the days and weeks that followed the storm, Hurricane Sandy confronted all New Yorkers and New Jerseyans by transforming the familiar. Heartwalk was originally commissioned by the Times Square Alliance and the Design Trust for Public Space for the Times Square Annual Valentine Design Competition.