Art Exhibits

Celluloid crosses the bridge known as the Flyover

I spent the afternoon of Thursday, September 13th 2012 on the High Line as part of the volunteer staff for Jennifer West’s unusual film/performance project, One Mile Parkour Film. For this project West, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, taped a mile of celluloid to the surface of the High Line and encouraged visitors to engage with it by writing messages, dragging their stilettos over it, dousing it with water, whatever they were in the mood for. I watched a man flick the ash of his cigar onto it.

I didn’t have time to catch the parkour part of the day’s events, but you can read more about it here if you’re interested. What intrigued me about this project is the many and varied patterns the film strip created as it passed over the different surfaces of the High Line. Verticals clashed with horizontals (above), repetitive shapes sat alongside random ones (below).

ASEA WAS HERE

As it lay flat on the walkway, the endless line of little sprockets in the film stood out against the random, disorganized specks of black stone in the cement. People wrote messages on the celluloid, introducing new elements. In some places the film snapped in two and coiled up along the walkway: accidental patterns. The different materials — celluloid film, steel rails, cement walkway — and the changing light kept this strange, temporary, installation interesting all day.

Busted film: plastic on steel surrounded by concrete

But there was one truly cool effect that I’m guessing was totally unexpected. I noticed it by chance when I glanced out my window as the sun was beginning to set. The film strip was glowing. Little dots of light were suddenly dancing off the surface of the park. I grabbed my camera and tripod, thinking it would pass quickly, once the sun had gone, but the effect lasted all night. The LED lights below the High Line’s railings provided enough illumination and at just the right angle to make Jennifer West’s filmstrip look like a magical third rail running up the middle of the pathway. In the morning it was gone.

Film strip at dusk, catches the light from the park railings

The glowing strip of celluloid

I’m not sure what all of this will add up to, but West will answer next month when she returns to the High Line to show “a digital format video” made from the mile-long piece of film that was altered by the visitors of September 13th.  (Details are here.) It’s all a bit meta for me, but, the events surely made for an unusual day on the High Line.

The “zebra” water towers atop the Starrett-Lehigh Building

Readers of this blog know that I love New York’s water towers. One of the most-read posts in the archive is a piece about Charles Kuralt, the great CBS newsman who also adored the “hoops and staves of the Middle Ages” that define our city skyline.

Next spring a new public art project will pay tribute to our water towers, sponsored by a group called Word Above the Street, a non-profit that uses art to advocate for social justice and sustainability. The idea for the water tower project followed a 2007 trip to Ethiopia by filmmaker Mary Jordan, who realized that one of the severest problems in Africa is that water might be abundant but “it was never in the right place.” The people of Ethiopia lacked containers — buckets, bottles — to transport the water from its source to their homes.  She returned determined to launch a campaign about the scarcity of water, and in time, the Water Tank Project was conceived.

For six weeks in Spring 2013 hundreds of water towers all over New York City will be transformed by established and emerging figures in art, music and science. A contingent of students from the city’s public schools will also be involved. [continue reading…]

Still Life With Landscape in packing crate, from 22nd Street

Sarah Sze’s marvelous and hugely popular Still Life With Landscape (Model for a Habitat) has moved from the spot it occupied for the past year (near 20th Street), but it hasn’t left the High Line yet. And in fact this piece continues to dazzle, even as it sits in packing mode in a temporary holding place just above 22nd Street. This is surely the mark of a true work of art: no matter where it sits, it draws us in and gives us the pleasure of its company.

Today, Still Life With Landscape offered a new framing device for the water towers atop the Spears Building. Always beautiful, these towers are now downright sculptural, framed by Sze’s steel lines. Early this morning light glinted off the metal, and the sculpture — now in many pieces — invited the viewer to peek and peer from every angle possible.

Check it out quickly, because this piece is leaving soon for good. But how nice to get a second look before it goes.

Water tower on the Spears Building

Arial view of Sarah Sze's "Still Life With Landscape"

Last week I received an email from a high school student in Bangladesh named Tinni Bhattacharyya. There, nearly 8,000 miles from 21st Street on Manhattan island, she has launched a campaign to make Sarah Sze’s sculpture “Landscape With Still Life” a permanent fixture on the High Line.

Tinni created a Facebook page for the campaign, where she writes:

Sze’s installation has become an integral part of the Highline’s ecosystem. Sze’s installation has evolved from an architectural frame to an organic living environment that is embedded in the ecosystem. While “Still Life with Landscape, Model for a Habitat” has been scheduled to be taken down on June 8th 2012, this campaign has been launched to preserve Sze’s piece in order to support the community of animals it has founded.

Tinni was born in New Delhi, but her father is a diplomat and so she grew up all over the world — in Belgium, China, Japan, and now Bangladesh. She first saw the High Line last summer when she was interning in New York. She told me that she had the opportunity to spend some time working in Sarah Sze’s studio, where she witnessed the process behind the creation of Sze’s pieces and came to understand the concepts the artist explores in her work. Tinni is motivated by the beauty of the artwork as well as its success as a habitat for many kinds of birds and insects. And her campaign is well underway; the Facebook page is fast accumulating comments, photos, and Likes.

I hope that Tinni succeeds. “Still Life With Landscape” is one of my favorite exhibits in the High Line’s public art program. Its Palladian lines and geometric shapes are strikingly, quietly, beautiful and even more, it brings the birds close to us, just inches away. In a big city with too many humans, this is a small blessing.

For more about Sarah Sze, visit the artist’s website. Go here to learn more about the High Line’s public art program. Join Tinni’s campaign on Facebook, here.

Charlie Hewitt. Image courtesy of Greenwich Arts Council

One of my favorite things about the High Line is the presence of public art throughout the year, in every season and in every form, media, and style.  Friends of the High Line committed itself from the very beginning to introducing the work of new artists as well as established ones, and the program — first run by Lauren Ross and today by Cecilia Alemani — has won awards and immense popularity from visitors.  The neighborhood the park traverses has long been a vibrant center of the arts, with visionary institutions — The Kitchen, Dia Art Foundation, Printed Matter, Exit Art — as well as hundreds (more than 400 at last official count) of commercial art galleries. The Whitney is building a new home, designed by Renzo Piano, at the southern end of the High Line, and Dia is constructing a large new exhibit space on 22nd Street. When those two projects are completed, the High Line’s neighborhood will arguably be the most important concentration of contemporary art in the United States.

The influence of the High Line’s art program will soon be visible in a new venue. On Mother’s Day the luxury rental complex known as Ten23, between 22nd & 23rd Street on Tenth Avenue, will install a piece of sculpture by the artist Charlie Hewitt. Called “Urban Rattle,” the work will stand some 20′ high in the center of the building’s patio, just below and on the eastern edge of the park. Hewitt is an American artist (born 1946) whose work includes paintings, sculpture, engraving, woodcuts, print-making and other media. His work has been acquired for collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library and the Library of Congress.

Emily Santangelo, the art consultant who arranged the project with Equity Residential, the building’s owner, describes it as “the first privately commissioned monumental sculpture to directly address the High Line and its community of visitors.” She says that Hewitt considers his work to be “doodles in steel,” and describes “Urban Rattle” as “playful and serious at the same time.” This seems a perfect combination, as the work will hover over the High Line’s lawn, a place of mixed use where children run, leap, and often screech with joy while adults read or engage in quiet conversation.

If you’d like to watch the installation, it will take place over the weekend, beginning on Saturday, May 12 and ending on Sunday afternoon. I’m told that the members of the FDNY’s (controversial) EMT station under the High Line will be lending a hand as the steel structure is unloaded and carried up to the patio.

As readers of this blog know, I documented the progress of Ten23 for almost three years as I was writing about the construction of section two of the High Line. The lawn — and the apartment complex — appear just outside my window, and were built in tandem. Photos of Hewitt’s piece will follow in a week or so. Meantime, here’s what it looks like today:

The High Line's Lawn and the Patio at Ten23

To learn more about the High Line’s public art program, visit the website of Friends of the High Line. To learn more about Charlie Hewitt, visit the author’s website or EmilyFineArt.com.

Barbie on the High Line

Sarah Sze’s “Still Life with Landscape” is one my favorite exhibitions on the High Line. As readers of this blog know, I tend to get sentimental about certain exhibits, notably Stephen Vitiello’s “A Bell For Every Minute,” which I still miss. But the point of the public art program is that new works continually appear, and in order for that to happen, old favorites have to come down.

Sze’s work has been attracting birds, butterflies, bees, and humans in huge numbers since it debuted on opening day of section two last year. Even the occasional dog stops by to have a sniff (see photo gallery). Barbie selected Sze’s piece from all of New York City’s landmarks as the location for her latest fashion shoot.

I’ve been photographing “Still Life” all year, jostling amongst the many tourists who stop, in surprise and delight, as soon as they reach it. I love the architectural quality of this piece; it makes the perfect bird feeder, but it also frames several standout buildings with its boxy pattern of steel girders:  London Towers, General Theological Seminary, the Empire State Building, the Guardian Angel Church.  Most wonderful of all, it brings the birds up close. Even New York’s pigeon population — normally happy to perch on a prosaic lamppost — has discovered Sze’s work, along with the sparrows, mourning doves, and other feathered friends.

Mourning Dove

The piece comes down at the end of June, so be sure to pay a visit between now and then. To learn more about Sarah Sze and her work visit SarahSze.com. Check out the gallery to see more photos.

NOTE: this posted has been updated

The billboard on 18th Street has probably been empty before, but I’ve never seen it, and certainly not as it is now, starkly black. It’s really quite striking: it shows an absence of advertising, which makes you consider what life might be like if we weren’t bombarded at every turn with ads and marketing promotions. This is the billboard that has displayed so many wonderful photographs as part of the High Line’s public art program (launch the slideshow below to see photos). When there’s not a beautiful or provocative image — like Anne Collier’s “Developing Tray,” which was on display in February — there’s often some humorous message from Edison Parking, which owns the lot below. My favorite: “Stop praying, God’s too busy to find you a parking space.”

Today, however, the billboard is empty. Last evening men in large machines were removing the giant pile of dirt that was part of a car company’s recent marketing stunt. Whatever. What’s cool about the billboard today is how the inky black background invites a lovely shadow of the High Line’s railing. If you stand there for awhile and watch the people walk by you’ll eventually see their shadow heads pass in the billboard, as if in a cartoon. Art often reflects our world and returns it to us in a different, altered form, for our consideration. In a way that’s what this empty billboard is doing now. There’s something blissfully simple and peaceful about it.  Check it out in the late afternoon when the sun casts its shadow and you’ll see what I mean. Enjoy it while it lasts. No doubt it won’t be long before the advertisers return.

UPDATE, April 6: shortly after I wrote this post the newest installation in the 18th Street Billboard art project was completed. It’s called “How Are You Feeling?” by David Shrigley. I took my photo in late morning sun, so no shadows, but I suspect you may still see them in the late afternoon against the black background. Read more about the piece and the artist here, on TheHighLine.org.

David Shrigley, "How Are You Feeling"?

Anne Collier, Developing Tray #2

Anne Collier’s photograph”Developing Tray #2,” now featured on the High Line Billboard at 18th Street, is a ringing testament to the power of the High Line’s art program. This piece didn’t strike me when I first saw it a few weeks ago, in broad daylight, but lately I’ve been visiting the park at dusk, and wow, what a difference an evening makes.

The work is so spare and simple that it stands out quite dramatically in the busy viewscape of buildings, car headlights, and rowdy billboard ads around it. But what makes Collier’s image such a great example of the power of public art is the way you can overlay your own ideas onto it. And the High Line makes the perfect foil. I’m not a good enough photographer to create anything worthwhile, but I’ve had great fun framing the eyeball through the railings. Every view is different, and every angle offers a new surprise.

I’ve loved all the photographs in the Billboard program, but didn’t realize until recently how and why these photos work so well in their unique setting.  Darren Almond’s FullMoon@TheNorthSea, a photograph that portrays the Huangshan mountain range in China on the evening of a full moon, was on display last year. I happened upon it one day during a rare October snow storm, which animated the billboard and transported everyone who saw it into another world altogether.

This billboard (when it’s not displaying a humorous slogan for the parking lot below it) makes you realize how different it is to see a work of art in a public space versus a museum or a gallery. The High Line’s commitment to public art is a boon to us all.

Darren Almond’s Fullmoon@The North Sea

I love the (relatively) new billboard on the High Line, which is part of the park’s great public art program. Joel Sternfeld selected Robert Adams’ black & white photograph of a highway in Nebraska, titled “Nebraska State Highway 2, Butte County” and it will remain on the billboard over the giant parking lot on 18th Street until the end of this month.

The High Line’s website explains that Adams made this image in 1978 “as part of a survey to discover how the grand landscapes of the western United States had been shaped, in ways both subtle and dramatic, by human development.” The empty road makes a strong contrast with our own “grand landscape” of Manhattan, towering majestically above Tenth Avenue where an endless stream of taxis, cars, motorcycles, trucks, bicycles, pedicabs, razors, and dudes on skateboards goes rolling by, day and night.

But I noticed something else when I looked at some photographs I took a few weeks ago: you can see the shadows of people walking along the High Line in the photograph. I have no idea if this was intentional, but Sternfeld understands better than anyone the way the sunlight dances on and around this park.

So there we are, walking along Robert Adams’ deserted Nebraska highway: yet another connection the High Line makes for us between the canyons of Manhattan and the prairies of the American west.