Art in the Parks

This ten-foot-tall, welded steel sculpture will be placed in the formerly inaccessible property at 33 First Street acquired by New York City’s Parks & Recreation the in 1935. Since 2008, First Street Green (FSG) has worked with Parks Department to revitalize the fallow lot adjacent to First Park—with the goal to remove the rubble and create a plaza and cultural space. The lot was fully renovated with a newly stabilized and paved plaza, landscaping and cast-iron fencing in 2011 when the park hosted the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a three-month temporary pavilion and public forum in which a varied range of cultural activities occurred.  During this period 55,000 visitors attended—reinforcing First Street Green’s original observation of a strong need and broad interest in an ongoing cultural space open for public use.

This exhibition is presented by First Street Green.

Lilliput will reflect on the traditional role of public art by offering a counterbalance to the monumental scale often employed for plaza sculptures and other outdoor installations in public spaces. As the first project in the HIGH LINE COMMISSIONS series for spring, 2012, Lilliput will feature miniature sculptures installed in unusual and unexpected places at the High Line – amongst the vegetation and along the pathway – to create an art treasure hunt for visitors. Lilliput takes its title from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, conjuring a magical world populated by fairy tale creatures, mysterious idols, and dreamlike landscapes.

Lilliput will feature installations by six artists from around the globe:
Oliver Laric, Alessandro Pessoli, Tomoaki Suzuki, Francis Upritchard, Erika Verzutti, llyson Vieira

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

For the High Line, Uri Aran presents a sound work that explores how we use personification and animal metaphors to define human behavior in our daily conversations. Working with a professional voice actor who uses a formal, slightly affected pronunciation, Aran has created a sound track that will emanate softly from the planting beds below the elevated pathway on the High Line between West 25th and West 26th Streets. The sound track features the actor reading a list of creatures, from common ones, like the household cat and the spider, to more wild ones, such the platypus and the shark, each described as “good” or “bad.” Serious and at times comical, the expressionless tone of the actor’s voice will clash with the definition of these creatures as either “good” or “bad,” sparking dialogue about the arbitrary nature of classification in language.

“Uri Aran’s imaginative works have always amazed me,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of High Line Art. “I look forward to watching visitors experience this installation and how they react to it as they walk along the High Line.”

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

This exhibition is presented by Cynthia Reeves Projects.

Sharing a natural dialogue with Union Square at the vibrant nexus of New York City is Malcolm D. MacDougall’s sculpture, Microscopic Landscape. The 24 foot, 7,500 lb work “is about potential energy and pushing a stagnant object as close to perceived movement as possible.” The constant motion found in Union Square is a microcosm teeming with diversity that defines the city, finding its inspiration in the multifaceted structures of the sculpture, and in turn inspiring this artist to observe activities as seen on the molecular level. The sculpture serves as a snapshot of the ongoing activity in the neighborhood; it is a static object that maintains the constant anticipation of movement, just as the grounds of Union Square provide the framework for the energetic flow of people and commerce. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Union Square Partnership.

For the High Line, Houseago presents Lying Figure, a 15-foot-long bronze sculpture of a headless giant resting on its elbows on the wooden rail ties between the High Line’s original rail tracks. As the third project in the HIGH LINE COMMISSIONS series for spring, 2012, Houseago’s Lying Figure will juxtapose Lilliput, the group exhibition that debuted on Thursday, April 19. Lilliput takes its title from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and conjures a magical world populated by fairy tale creatures, mysterious idols, and dreamlike landscapes. Houseago’s Lying Figure will introduce the presence of a giant – the park’s own Gulliver – into Lilliput’s diminutive sculptures installed along the park’s pathway and amidst the plants.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line

This 40-foot-tall steel sculpture by Monika Sosnowska marks the threshold between the urban environment of midtown Manhattan and the landscape of Central Park. The artist has used pulleys, cranes, and other heavy machinery to manipulate a spiral staircase to resemble an evergreen tree. No longer climbable, its stairs cascade around the central shaft of the sculpture like weighted tree limbs. The ribbon-like railing forms a twisting red line against the black silhouette of the sculpture. As if piercing the pavement with industrial force, Fir Tree (2012) conjures an image of skyscrapers with steel roots below the city.

For more than ten years, Sosnowska’s work has explored our psychological relationship to the built environment, creating complex installations that alter our perceptions of familiar objects and spaces. Based in Warsaw, Sosnowska often works with architectural elements associated with Eastern Europe during the Soviet period. Fir Tree echoes the industrial steel staircases found on the exterior walls of Polish housing blocks. Here, this once-functional object refuses to serve its intended purpose. Instead it becomes an animated and outsized metaphor, testing the bounds of a familiar form as it reaches toward the urban skyline.

This Exhibition is presented by the Public Art Fund.

​Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art presents a monumental sculpture by acclaimed artist, Leo Villareal. Largely inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL will apply concepts of geometry and mathematical relationships within a towering 30-foot tall, illuminated sculpture.

A commission of the Mad. Sq. Art program, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL will feature two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene,” referring to the form’s discovery by Buckminster Fuller. Individual pixels located every 1.2 inches along the tubes are each capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors and will be specifically tuned by the artist’s own software, creating a subtle and sophisticated palette to enliven the Park. Relying on LED technologies driven by chance, BUCKYBALL’s light sequences will create exuberant, random compositions of varied speed, color, opacity, and scale. BUCKYBALL will trigger neurological processes within the brain, calling on our natural impulse to identify patterns and gather meaning from our external environment.

Through basic elements such as pixels and binary codes, Villareal allows for a better understanding of the underlying structures and systems that govern everyday function. As he builds these simple elements into a full-scale sculptural installation that moves, changes, and interacts, this work ultimately grows into a complex, dynamic form that questions common notions of space, time, and sensorial pleasure.

This exhibition is presented by Mad. Sq. Art.

Spanning 100 blocks to various locations along Broadway, Cemin’s monumental mirrored stainless steel sculpture, Vortex, will tower 40 feet high, embodying mankind’s desire for transcendence, whisking up into the clouds all that it reflects on its surface. Along with six additional Broadway malls, stretching to W. 157th Street, Cemin will present sculptures in a range of material. These sculptures include: The Four, 1997, a Corten steel sculpture that longs to be at once both geometric and organic; In The Center, 2002, an ominous archetypical creature existing at the core of our minds; Portrait of the Word Why, 2008, a mirrored stainless steel portrait of one of the most mysterious words in the English language; Aphrodite, 2006, a copper depiction of the ancient goddess in primitive form, representing the female figure simply and hieratically; and The Wind, 2002, a large white marble sculpture which appears like putty, kneaded and manipulated by giant hands.

This project is presented by The Broadway Mall Association in collaboration with Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Department of Transportation and the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District.