Art in the Parks

Charles Ginnever’s piece Medusa (1986) is located at 145th Street in Riverside Park and echoes his sculpture High Rise, sited on a neighboring lawn.   This exhibition marks Ginnever’s return to Parks, having exhibited in Carl Schurz Park in 1967 as part of Sculpture in Environment, one of the city’s first public art exhibitions. Charles Ginnever was born in San Mateo, CA in 1931. He is best known for his large-scale, open form works for the outdoors. He created the first of these in 1958 with abandoned railroad ties and structural steel. The result was a deconstruction of prevailing sculptural spatial concepts that he continues to examine. A contemporary of Mark di Suvero and Richard Serra, who also exhibit monumental steel pieces,  Ginnever’s sculptures have a trick of the eye and appear to warp as someone looks at the pieces from different angles.

The Lower East Side Waterfront Alliance & Lower Manhattan Cultural Council invited artists and design professionals to participate in a community-driven, site-responsive design process for the temporary activation of Pier 42 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Artists and designers were asked to propose ideas for cultural activity including temporary public art, small-scale interventions, programming and event spaces that directly engage the site and community in which the pier is located.

Chat Travieso is a Brooklyn-based artist and architectural designer born in Miami, Florida. Travieso creates interactive installations and urban interventions that engage the public and encourage people to question their assumptions of the everyday built environment.

Chat’s project “On a Fence” transforms the fence surrounding Pier 42 into an interactive structure incorporating seating, play, exercise, and signage (done in collaboration with graphic designer Yeju Choi). The project seeks to invert the function and meaning of the fence from a physical barrier to a place of inclusion. On a Fence is in collaboration with Yeju Choi, (Signage, Graphic Design and Identity)

For more information on the project please visit Paths to Pier 42.

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 eight sculptures on view along Riverside Park South from 59th to 72nd Streets. The sculptures were created by an international team of selected League students during a nine-month program led by master sculptor Greg Wyatt. The pieces explore "The Function of the Public Square: Role and Responsibility of the Artist Relative to Riverside Park South." The artists are: Sherwin Banfield, John N. Erianne, Reina Kubota, Beñat Iglesias Lopez, Anna Kuchel Rabinowitz, Anne Stanner, and Morito Yasumitsu.

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

The Love & Peace Global Sculpture Campaign is a series of 15 monumental glossy 15-foot high floral sculptures which are exhibited in galleries, museums, and public spaces around the globe from 2012-2017. These fiberglass poppies, collectively titled Love, have travelled to numerous cities including Rome, Prague, New York, London, Singapore, Shenzhen, and Venice during the 55th Biennale. The driving force behind Tzarev’s Love & Peace Global Sculpture Campaign is her belief that art is the bridge by which the world can be connected.

This exhibition is presented by  Ana Tzarev Gallery

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.

Fanny Allie, a French artist based in New York, has created a site-specific public artwork for Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village. The sculpture, titled Serendipity, is a life-size, steel silhouette of a formerly homeless man who spent much of his time in the park. The exhibition will be located near the western entrance at St. Mark’s Place and Avenue A and is on view through November 2013.

Allie visited Tompkins Square to prepare for the exhibition and find a regular park visitor to serve as the model for her piece. Instead the model found her. Christopher Gamble approached Allie and struck up a conversation. They later met for coffee where he revealed he was previously homeless for 28 years and frequented the park. Gamble agreed to model for the sculpture. The steel figure stands with its face looking up to the sky, shoulders and arms outreached, preparing to take flight. Allie interprets the piece as a symbol of hope and the desire to strive for something greater. In a series of recent works, she has focused on the human body, with a particular interest in its outline. By removing the center of the figure, she plays with ideas of memory and the mark we leave on places and others.

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.

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.

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.