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"Entrance to a Garden" on View May 13 through August 29, 2004

The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation is pleased to announce the first exhibition of Dennis Oppenheim’s latest monumental sculpture, "Entrance to a Garden," on view in Tramway Plaza at Second Avenue between East 59^th and 60^th Streets. Standing at the Manhattan terminus of the Queensborough Bridge and the Roosevelt Tram, "Entrance to a Garden" greets commuters and residents with a shining 25 foot image of a shirt and invites them to vary their usual commute by cutting through the nine foot pathway bisecting the work.

Using steel and perforated galvanized metal mesh, Oppenheim created a sculptural image of a shirt on an architectural scale. "The fusion of art, architecture, and fashion—art forms clearly separated in the past—is one of the objectives of this work," said Oppenheim. Framed by a blue suit tie above and lapels on either side, a tunnel bisects the sculpture. When "Entrance to a Garden" is exhibited in Genoa, Italy later this year, the pathway through the sculpture will lead to a small garden—suggesting a relationship between landscape architecture and fabric design.

Born in Washington State in 1938, Oppenheim studied art at California College of Arts and Crafts and Stanford University. He has lived and worked in New York City since 1967. Oppenheim’s diverse artistic output over the past thirty years has included earth art, conceptual art, performance, and monumental sculpture referencing architecture and machines. In addition to numerous permanent commissions and outdoor exhibitions, Oppenheim has been featured in one-person exhibitions at major museums in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Parks & Recreation’s temporary public art program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in City parks. Committed to the exhibition of art by emerging and established artists, Parks & Recreation has supported projects ranging from international exhibitions in flagship parks to local, community works in neighborhood parks and traffic islands.

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