Art in the Parks

Description:
Kim Beck presents three sculptures resembling the skeletal framework behind advertising billboards. These blank forms emulate the abounding indicators of the economic recession, such as empty storefronts and "For Sale" signs. Beck's sculptures have the illusion of depth when viewed from the front, but as visitors move past them, the side views reveal that they are completely flat, cut from perspective drawings and built like theater props.

A series of three sculptures are installed on roofs of buildings close to the High Line. They integrate seamlessly into the environment of the High Line neighborhood, echoing existing billboards and buildings in partial states of construction. The existence of the three reinforces their visibility and invites visitors to rethink the logic of what they are seeing.

This is a project by the Friends of the High Line.

Description:
​Untitled (Stump Fire #4), an 11' x 28' photograph by artist Catherine Opie, is the newest installment of Socrates Sculpture Park's ongoing Broadway Billboard series.

Opie has created a mise-en-scΑne of epic scope, drama, and mystery. Nature and artifice, light and darkness are just some of the contradictory elements of Opie's image that create an ominous tableau for us to contemplate. Neither a warm hearth, nor regenerative forest fire, we discover it is liquid, not wood, which is ablaze. The log stumps in the foreground are Opie's own handmade clay sculptures, which further heightens the surrealism of the scene. The image hovers between an apocalyptic figment of our imaginings and the possibility of nature run amok. What is clear, however, is that all is not well within our environment or psyche. Untitled (Stump Fire #4) is from a series of new work and will be part of an exhibition at Regen Projects, Los Angeles in 2013.

Catherine Opie is one the great photographers of this generation and documentarian of our American landscape and people. A graduate of CalArts, she currently teaches in the studio program at the University of California at Los Angeles. Select solo exhibitions include Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2010), Catherine Opie: American Photographer at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2008), Catherine Opie: Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2006). Opie was a 2009 recipient of the President's Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Women's Caucus for Art and was awarded a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Description:
​Each year, Socrates Sculpture Park selects artists to produce outdoor artworks within the Park. Reflective of our time, these artists are making public sculptures that are subtly mysterious, visually compelling, and, at times, provocative. The economy, spirituality, Americana, language, and our built/natural world are subjects explored in this presentation of emerging artists to watch. Rather than being a zeitgeist or thematic exhibition, each artist has a distinct artwork (and in some cases performance) that embodies his or her individuality, passion, and exploration of art in the public sphere. A 1965 Ford Mustang painted white with corn-rowed racing stripes, slabs of cast concrete snapped from compression, a transparent floating Buddha, and a stunning 30 foot flag pole woven with security straps are among the sculptures in the exhibition.

Unique to anywhere in New York City, artists are awarded a grant and a residency in the Park's outdoor studio and receive technical support to facilitate the production of new outdoor sculptures for exhibition in the Park. The artists develop their projects throughout the summer in the open studio and on-site in the landscape, offering visitors the opportunity to experience the creation of the works that are then installed in the Park. The sculptural works in this exhibition are presented in a heavily used public space in an ethnically diverse community and situated within a beautiful waterfront area of Queens with views of the Manhattan skyline.

The 2012 Emerging Artists are: Jarrod Beck, Melissa Calderon, Cui Fei, Brent Everett Dickinson, Sarah Dornner, Tamar Ettun, Jessica Feldman, Ben Hall, Charles Harlan, Hugh Hayden, Chang-Jin Lee, Fernando Mastrangelo, Bundith Phunsombatlert, Jeff Williams, and Seldon Yuan.

Description:
​Exploring the intersections between architecture, design, and sculpture is Socrates Sculpture Park’s exhibition and residency, Folly. Architects Jerome Haferd and K Brandt Knap submitted the winning proposal for this exhibition, titled Curtain, exploring and investigating materiality, spatial interaction, and concepts about our built environment. The project is composed of a series of frames of slender wood posts, defining a space of 20 feet wide on each side with a roof canopy. The horizontal planes of the structure are articulated by a dense series of plastic white chains, fixed in some places, hanging free in others, creating “rooms” that viewers can occupy, offering changing spatial experiences within the fixed wooden framework.  The piece alludes to the material quality of the chain as it reacts to the breezes off the East River as well as a word play on the architectural term “curtain wall.”

Prompted by an increased interest among younger architects and designers in fabrication technologies and materials, Folly is an exciting opportunity for these emerging minds to rediscover the pleasures of craft and explore the process of making. The result of collaboration between Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League is presented in the park’s waterfront location, offering a rare and immediate connection to the landscape and the public.

Description:

Part of Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City at Socrates Sculpture Park, this project looks at the former Sunswick Creek as an armature to explore and learn about Ravenswood’s history and its influence in New York City.

The intention of this project is to engage citizens in the development of their community by revealing the histories that have helped to shape present-day Ravenswood, Long Island City, and Astoria. Sunswick Creek was a substantial lifeline for the surrounding area that aided in social and agricultural growth. Through this past, historic connections can help to provide insight into growth in the area and suggest how a natural ecology changes with local development.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum.

Description:

Civic Action features the work of artists Natalie Jeremijenko and xClinic, Mary Miss, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and George Trakas - all known for their innovative works in the public sphere. Civic Action is the second half of a two-part exhibition with The Noguchi Museum and is curated by Amy Smith-Stewart. The artists were asked to proffer alternative visions and an imaginative future for the northern industrial stretch of Long Island City, Queens that encompasses both organizations - Socrates and Noguchi. In 2011, each artist formed a team (listed below) comprised of architects, urban planners, writers, historians, and other consultants to re-imagine the area in response to increasing residential development, rezoning, and ecological threats. Their findings were exhibited as models, installations and drawings at The Noguchi Museum from October 13, 2011 to April 22, 2012. Now at Socrates, their ideas, which address accessibility, sustainability, community building, and urban environment, will be realized through sculpture, site-specific installations, earthworks and participatory, social activities.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum.

Description:
Take a storytelling tour in Jackson Heights, Queens. Experience four readings of newly-commissioned works in spaces selected by the architects at SO – IL. Transhistoria is the third edition of stillspotting nyc, a two-year multidisciplinary project that takes the Guggenheim’s Architecture and Urban Studies programming into the streets of the city’s five boroughs.
 
Family Days
Sat, Apr 28 and May 5
A family component will be offered in conjunction with stillspotting nyc featuring a story written expressly for families and performed in Travers Park.

Tickets at stillspotting.guggenheim.org
$10, $8 members, FREE children 12 and under
Check-in at 40-40 75 St, Queens, 1 block from 74 St/Roosevelt Ave transit hub
QuestionsΑ Contact us at stillspotting@guggenheim.org or call (212) 423-3515

Description:

The EAF11 exhibition launches a year-long celebration of the Park's 25th Anniversary. After a five-year expansion of two additional artists per year, the EAF11 exhibition also marks the first annual initiative to support twenty artists. The 2011 fellows are: Cecile Chong, Joy Curtis, Nadja Frank, Ben Godward, Darren Goins, Ethan Greenbaum, Jesse A. Greenberg, Rachel Higgins, Roxanne Jackson, Hong Seon Jang, Jason Clay Lewis, Saul Melman, Jo Nigoghossian, Nick Paparone, Don Porcella, Jessica Segall, Walter Benjamin Smith, Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, Nicolas Touron, and Nichole van Beek.

Fellowship artists are awarded a grant and a residency in the Park's outdoor studio and are also provided with technical support and access to tools, materials, and equipment to facilitate the production of new sculptures for exhibition in the Park. The artists develop their projects throughout the summer in the open studio and on site in the landscape, offering visitors the opportunity to experience the creation of the works that are then installed in the Park. Representing a broad range of materials, working methods and subject matter, the diverse sculptural works in this exhibition are presented against the spectacular waterfront view of the Manhattan skyline.

This is an exhibition by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Description:

​Awning Studies: SOCRATES, 2011 by Washington DC-based artist Patrick McDonough, is the culmination of a three-month Public Art Residency (PAR) Program, established in partnership with the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA).

A collaboration between Socrates and the WPA was initiated in 2010, to introduce artists from the District of Columbia area to the practical and conceptual issues related to the creation of public art. McDonough is the second recipient of this award. The PAR Program is an extension of the Park's ongoing OPEN SPACE series, a forum for single artists and collaborative projects.

Awning Studies: SOCRATES, 2011 continues McDonough's exploration of the awning as a key architectural adornment that is central to the domestic vernacular of the northeastern United States. His project takes the form of a series of fabricated awnings without buildings: some installed in tress, some arching over the water and others rising on a combination of steel and clear acrylic supports.

This is an exhibition by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Description:
​MistWave will have a new home on Cedar Grove Beach this summer after its successful exhibition last summer at the Figment NYC 2011 Art Festival on Governors Island.  From Memorial Day through Labor Day weekends this interactive sculpture will be cooling off sunbathers and beach combers near the park house at Ebbitts Street and Cedar Grove Avenue.

The artists were inspired by Japanese artist and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai’s celebrated woodblock print Under the Wave off Kanagawa (1830–32).  Constructed out of recycled scaffolding materials, the crest rises above the viewer spraying forth water droplets, similar to the troubled sea in Hokusai’s composition. This turquoise, tubular sculpture represents the vascular system of a wave and offers a refreshing mist from each of the five crests.  Padilla-Harris’ playful use of line and form transitions a static sculpture into a vehicle of poetic expression that contrasts the fragility of human life with the power of nature.