Summer 2012: New York City
Common Ground
May 24–November 30, 2012
City Hall Park
Paola Pivi: How I Roll
June 20–August 26, 2012
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park
Oscar Tuazon: People
July 19, 2012–April 26, 2013
Brooklyn Bridge Park
info [at] publicartfund.org
T +1 212.223.7800
Public Art Fund is pleased to announce its 2012 summer exhibition program. Opening on May 24, Common Ground, a group exhibition featuring sculpture, installation, and performance, looks at how different works of art approach the idea of public sculpture and civic engagement. Opening on June 20 is Paola Pivi’s How I Roll, a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture featuring a rotating plane conceived for Doris C. Freedman Plaza. And finally, on July 19, Public Art Fund presents the first site-specific exhibition for Brooklyn Bridge Park—Oscar Tuazon’s People. Featuring three new sculptures, the show explores the archetypal language of form emerging from both the natural world and the realms of human ideas and culture.
Common Ground
May 24–November 30, 2012
City Hall Park
(Bordered by Broadway, Chambers Street, Centre Street, and Park Row)
Traditional public monuments and statues had a clear civic purpose, many having been commissioned to commemorate an important event, notable individual, or significant group. The artists featured in this show—Elmgreen & Dragset, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Roger Hiorns, Jenny Holzer, Matthew Day Jackson, Christian Jankowski, Justin Matherly, Paul McCarthy, Amalia Pica, and Thomas Schütte—have taken this tradition of civic sculpture and expanded upon it. Developing a new civic dialogue, the show explores the reappropriation of iconography from classical sculpture; engagement with themes of the individual and society; incorporation of language, symbolism, and metaphor; and the use of non-traditional materials and performance, among other themes. The exhibition reveals how a work of art that articulates an artist’s personal vision might also be thought of as having a civic function, value, or engagement.
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which is funded through Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Additional support provided by Holly & Jonathan Lipton, and by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Justin Matherly’s new work is part of the Public Art Fund program In the Public Realm, which is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.
Paola Pivi
How I Roll
June 20–August 26, 2012
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park
(Corner of 60th Street and Fifth Avenue)
Through the recontextualization of familiar subjects, objects, and places, Paola Pivi’s work creates surprising and enigmatic situations that challenge viewers’ perceptions. Whether by staging a photograph of two zebras on a snowy mountaintop or transforming a contemporary art museum into an arena of screaming people, her irreverent installations, sculptures, performances, and photographs bring together playful and unexpected elements from our everyday world that present the inconceivable as real.
In her new work, How I Roll, a twin-engine plane, supported by vertical steel posts at the wing tips, rotates in the center of Doris C. Freedman Plaza. This subversion of the expected—the juxtaposition of a busy Midtown Manhattan plaza with a Piper Seneca slowly rotating on its own axis—is central to Pivi’s practice. A joyful expression of creative imagination, the work captures the artist’s fascination with highly engineered machines that are also capable of poetic transformation into captivating, artistic objects. How I Roll is her first public art project in the United States.
This exhibition was initiated and completed with generous support from Adam Lindemann and Amalia Dayan. Additional support provided by anonymous donors, the Jonathan Sobel & Marcia Dunn Foundation, Billie Tsien &Tod Williams, and Mickey Cartin. Assistance provided by Arup, Galerie Perrotin, and Galerie Massimo De Carlo.
Oscar Tuazon
People
July 19, 2012–April 26, 2013
Brooklyn Bridge Park
For his Public Art Fund commission, Oscar Tuazon will present three new sculptures that respond to Brooklyn Bridge Park’s physical landscape as well as its role as a site of play and leisure. Like previous works, these hybrid sculptures incorporate both natural materials and industrial building techniques—local trees and cement casting are at the core of each of work—and explore the idea of architecture, labor, and reinvention. In one work, a tall tree trunk is supported with a minimalist steel triangle and conceals a spring from which water will flow. Formed by a ten-foot-square, cast cement cube with a tall tree embedded at its central axis, the second work functions both as an icon and a passageway along the pier. And in the third, a steel hoop is attached to a tree trunk fixed against a large cement wall, not unlike a DIY handball wall. Informed by Minimalism, performance, and utilitarian construction, these structures will activate the area they inhabit—a site that inherently juxtaposes organic and industrial sensibilities.
Major support provided by Kraus Family Foundation. Additional support provided by Jennifer & Malcolm Nolen.
Media Contact
Kellie Honeycutt
khoneycutt@publicartfund.org
T +1 212.223.7810
