Art in the Parks

Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas is known for his large-scale, site-specific sculptural installations that transform their environs into a vision of their own potential future. Employing a unique mixture of cement and clay, Villar Rojas imbues his sculptures with a material destined to crumble while on view. His works combine the daunting scale of conventional public sculptures with a precarious fragility, keeping viewers mindful of the ephemerality of even the most imposing monoliths.

For the High Line, the artist presents The Evolution of God, a new, site-specific installation composed of thirteen abstract sculptures which punctuate the wild, self-seeded landscape of the High Line at the Rail Yards, and creates a sculptural progression and a rhythmic sequence of forms, reminiscent of a musical score. This new project extends the artist’s own traditional treatment of materials, by integrating organic elements such as seeds, vegetables, and other perishable components inspired by the natural landscape on the High Line as well as non-perishable items such as clothing, sneakers, and rope. Seemingly sturdy, the sculptures will instead turn into living organisms, revealing the passage of time through vegetal sprouts and tectonic cracks, which will slowly return the sculptures to the surrounding landscape.

This exhibition is presented by Friends of the High Line

The Typewriter Project is an interactive literary art installation–a small, wooden shelter just big enough for a seat, desk, and typewriter–which invites passersby to join in a citywide linguistic exchange that takes both analog and digital forms. The booth is outfitted with a vintage typewriter, 100–foot long paper scroll, solar generator, hidden tablet, and a custom–built USB typewriter kit, which allows every written entry to be collected, stored, and posted online for users to read, share, and comment upon. Acting as a public, community diary, each scroll will capture something of the sound, narrative, and nuance of a specific corner of the city. The Typewriter Project’s mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun and interactive means for the public to engage with poetry.

The project is located on the south side of Tompkins Square Park near the Hare Krishna Tree. The project’s hours of operation are Monday–Friday, 3 p.m.–8 p.m., and Saturday & Sunday, 12 p.m.–8 p.m.

This exhibition is presented by The Poetry Society of New York.

Right Here and Then is an exhibition of 12 plaster sculptures created by students from grades 5-8 from local public schools. Students explored the relationship between object and self in studying historical items from the museum and connected this concept to their own belongings through observational drawing. In their final pieces, they worked to transform themselves into 3-D objects installed on the grounds of the museum.

This exhibition is presented by Scribble Art Workshop and The Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance.

Black Rock Negative Energy Absorber is from a series of sculptures Rudy Shepherd has been working on since 2006, the first having been installed in Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY. Shepherd describes the Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers as a group of sculptures with magical functions: to expunge negative energy from viewers – in the form of prejudice, racism, or even quotidian disdain – and allow them to respond to life with the more open, compassionate, and positive aspects of their personalities. The series reinterprets practices culled from new age mythology and ancient religions to heal the negative energies in society.

The exhibition is brought to you by First Street Green.

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 seven sculptures on view along Riverside Park South from 59th to 69th Streets.

The sculptures were created by an international team of selected League students during a nine-month program. The pieces for this exhibition explore “The Architecture of Nature.”  The artists are: Laura Barmack, Janet Fekete-Bolton, Ana Sofìa Martì, Lindsay McCosh, Phyllis Sanfiorenzo, Natsuki Takauji, and Minako Yoshino.

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

Jim Rennert’s THINK BIG stands at over 12-feet tall serving as an inspiration to everyone who works hard every day to achieve their dreams and goals. The monumental businessman gazes up at the sky and the Manhattan skyline, reminding us that if we “think big” we can attain anything and that the American Dream is still very much alive and possible. Businessman or not, everyone can still relate to the themes in their own personal ways. THINK BIG is the culmination of positive thinking, as the original concept started as a two-inch sculpture. Rennert is excited to bring the sculpture to New York so that everyone can indeed, “think big.”

The project is made possible by the Cavalier Gallery and Union Square Partnership.

Three of Juan Soriano’s sculptures are now in New York City: Pájaro III (Bird III), Pájaro de Dos Caras (Bird with Two Faces), and Paloma de Bronce (Bronze Dove). Soriano, a deeply committed Mexican artist from an early age, was an independent voice during the years that the murals of Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco dominated Mexican art. Putting distance between his art and theirs, he created an individual vision in painting, ceramics, stage and costume design, and monumental sculptures.

Placed in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, on East 47th Street between First and Second Avenues, they bring to New York City Juan Soriano’s unique perspective on art and society. Inspired by the popular and indigenous arts of Mexico, he drew on Cubism, German Expressionism, Fauvism and the Paris artists of the interwar period. His individuality is clearly on view in the three sculptures now in New York.

This exhibition is presented by The World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, The Consulate General of Mexico in New York, The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and the Fundación Juan Soriano y Marek Keller

Gazing Globes features eighteen crystal balls that hold the detritus of contemporary culture, including used batteries, computer parts, and other remnants of technology sprinkled with fairy dust made of pulverized CDs.

The winter months are the perfect time to view Paula Hayes’s Gazing Globes exhibition, which is made up of eighteen transparent spheres that hold the detritus of contemporary culture. The globes, says Hayes, will give the park “an arctic feeling, a winter wonderland.” Formed into beauteous objects, Hayes’ crystal balls positioned on elegant fiberglass pedestals summon the present and predict the future. Each see-through globe lit from within will house used batteries, tossed-out computer parts, castoff electronic transistor parts, vacuum tubes, shredded rubber tires and recycled plastic flotsam. To these mixed remnants of technology and culture the artist adds crystals and minerals. A shimmering fairy dust made from pulverized CDs will coat the bottom and sides of each sculpture’s interior. Hayes, who typically works with varieties of plant materials, is determined that everyday castoffs are indicative of a society’s behavior and value system and symptomatic of the current landscape.

Gazing globes are a decorative form first used in outdoor gardens in the Middle Ages. These orbs were made of hand-blown glass, and were considered to hold magical power and to foster good luck or ward off evil. Hayes conjures the mystical character of the historic object but makes the form fully contemporary as she creates work with present-day scrutiny and a nod to clairvoyance.

This exhibition is presented by the Madison Square Park Conservancy

Broadway Morey Boogie borrows its title from Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s 1942-43 masterpiece Broadway Boogie Woogie. The painting, which today is one of the Museum of Modern Art’s most popular artworks, once mobilized the avant-garde ideals of abstraction in the service of a brash ode to the dynamism and vitality of New York City street life. This exhibition aims to do the same by populating the backbone of Manhattan—surfing down Broadway from 166th Street to Columbus Circle—with a group exhibition of outdoor sculpture by contemporary American artists. The first of its kind on twelve highly-varied neighborhood sites, this show spans a variety of mediums and methods employed by artists both emerging and established. The works were selected in an attempt to engage audiences at street level with accessible, thought-provoking artworks of modest to monumental scale.

Broadway Morey Boogie is curated by Marlborough Chelsea and produced in collaboration with the Broadway Mall Association and NYC Parks.

Artists included:
Matt Johnson at 166th Street (Mitchel Square); Drew Heitzler at 157th Street; Dan Colen at 137th Street (Montefiore Park); Davina Semo at 117th Street; Paul Drueke at 96th Street; Lars Fisk at 79th Street; Tony Matelli at 73rd Street (Verdi Square); Devin Troy Strother at 72nd Street; Sara Braman at 64th Street (Dante Park); and Joanna Malinowska at 59th Street (Columbus Circle).

Sara Braman’s piece at Dante Park (Broadway and 64th Street) has been temporarily removed for Winter’s Eve at Lincoln Square and will return on December 5, 2014.

Humorous and ironic, Gimhongsok’s work challenges the viewer to consider the contradictions and blurred boundaries of fact and fiction, originality and the copy, banality and the spectacular. He often uses everyday materials to engage his audience in a dialogue about preconceived and conventional values found in communities and in art. In Bearlike Construction, the form is immediately recognizable as a teddy bear, but is assembled out of cast bronze garbage bags rather than the conventional soft fur. The piece, which measures over five feet square also wittily echoes the ubiquitous piles of garbage bags found on street corners throughout New York City.