Ahearn Park

Ahearn Park’s First Temporary Public Art Exhibit:

Monday, April 20, 2015
No. 26
http://www.nyc.gov/parks

On Display at Ahearn Park now through March 20, 2016

Artist Allen Glatter’s abstract steel sculpture Toro is now on view at Ahearn Park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Exhibited in cooperation with NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program, this will be the first temporary public art installation in Ahearn Park and the sculpture will be on view through March 2016.

“At first sight, the sculpture of Allen Glatter might appear to be a literal take on Paul Klee’s remark that a drawing is simply a line going on a walk. Each work, including Toro, takes the form of a continuous curve zigzagging through space, rising from the ground to above eye level and traversing the better part of a gallery room, or in the case of the outdoor work, a sidewalk.

“Constructed from seamlessly joined steel tubing, uniform in diameter, the freestanding sculptures simultaneously gather and perforate the spaces around them. Walking around the work produces a pleasant feeling that seems to derive from a rhythm of anticipation and surprise; despite the few formal elements involved, the overall experience varies radically from one vantage point to another. Each sculpture has a definite axis, and when viewed in that direction, the piece tends to open up into a number of loop windows. Though there are many changes of direction in its path, the curve is less of a meandering walk than a sequence of turns, an itinerary.” Excerpted from a text by Philip Ording.

This exhibit is sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts.

Allen Glatter received a BFA from Pratt Institute and lives and works in Brooklyn. In the summer of 2013, he installed his first large-scale outdoor sculpture Tally-Ho at the intersection of York and Front Streets in Dumbo, Brooklyn as part of the New York City Department of Transportation Arterventions Program. Additionally, his work has been exhibited at the 2012 Dumbo Arts Festival, NY; Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA; NADA Hudson, Hudson NY; Model Theories at fordPROJECT, NY; and was the subject of the one-person exhibition Trots and Bonnie at Rawson Projects, NY.

NYC Parks' Art in the Parks 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 New York City parks. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art.

Image Credit: Allen Glatter, Toro, photograph courtesy of the artist