Thursday, March 4, 2021 – Good reasons to welcome spring with some out-of-door art
THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 2021
The
303rd Edition
From Our Archives
GREAT NEW PUBLIC
ART INSTALLTIONS
FROM UNTAPPED NEW YORK
Eco Dev Art Installation and Misc. Winter Shots on Monday, Feb. 8, 2021 in New York. (Ann-Sophie Fjello-Jensen/Alliance for Downtown New York)
85 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan is now home to two new light sculptures. Hungarian artist Viktor Vicsek created the piece entitled “Talking Heads.” It features two 21-foot tall heads covered in 4,000 LED lights. The lights change to create different facial expressions as the heads communicate.
The interactive sculpture “C/C,” designed by Singapore-based artist Angela Chong, is a bench made of contoured acrylic panels bound by steel. It performs a rainbow-colored LED light show at night while casting interesting shadows during the day.
A sweeping survey of KAW’S career from his roots as a graffiti artist to a dominating force in contemporary art, KAWS: WHAT PARTY highlights five overarching tenets in the artist’s practice. You will be immersed in the art of KAWS through the various sections of the exhibition.
Renowned for his pop culture-inspired characters in paintings and sculpture and playful use of abstraction with meticulous execution, the show covers drawings, paintings, bronze sculptures, objects and monumental wooden sculptures of his well known COMPANION character. Museum visitors can digitally interact with the art through AR (augmented reality) app on their smartphones. The exhibition is on view through September 5, 2021.
Installation View of The Seances aren’t helping I, 2021 Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Image The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo Bruce Schwar
The séances aren’t helping by Carol Bove will be the second commission featured on the facade of The Met Fifth Avenue. The spaces Bove’s work will fill have historically been empty. Though the niches were intended to contain art, they were empty for 117 years. Bove’s four massive works are sculpted into nonrepresentational forms that “resonate with modernist styles such as Art Deco and abstraction.”
Bove’s piece contrasts the classical style of Richard Morris Hunt’s facade design, which “subtly calls for us to reevaluate and reckon with the legacies of tradition.” The tile also, The séances aren’t helping, further emphasizes the ongoing struggle to reckon with our past. The sculptures will be on display until November 2021.
Photo credit Happy Monday
An exploration of light continues at the South Street Seaport with works entitled Electric Dandelions, Hands of Inspiration and Daisies. All three installations are walkable throughout the cobblestone streets of the district and come to life at night. though they are also viewable any time of day.
Electric Dandelions are 28-feet tall sculptures lining Fulton Street. They are constructed from steel and acrylic spheres featuring a seemingly endless interactive display of LED animations. Artist Abram Santa Cruz and the LA-based art collective Liquid PXL created the work in collaboration with Art House Live and Fired Up Management.
Hands of Inspiration by Kareem Fletcher uses multicolored patterns to represent themes of diversity, unity, and equality through a series of works displayed in the windows of 193 Front Street in partnership with the South Street Seaport Museum. Daisies presents a range of multidisciplinary work in the form of an outdoor walkable gallery. Curated by artist Paige Silveria, the series of art and photography draws inspiration from the vibrantly wrought cult classic 1996 film “Daisies”. The work is best viewed after dark.
Courtesy of Chelsea Market
Scattered throughout Chelsea Market this month visitors will find a series of mixed-media artworks by Brooklyn-based artist Voodo’ Fe. The works honor all of the February and March celebrations of Black History Month, Valentine’s Day, and Women’s History Month. The art speaks to “to a diverse range of issues, feelings, and pop culture,” depicting famous figures such as Kobe Bryant, Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg among others.
A new addition to the exhibit this month is a special collaboration with Run DMC frontman Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. The collaborative piece, titled “Me and my microphone,” consists of a series of real-life paintings that can be experienced through an augmented reality app. Visitors can now download the Arloopa application and scan their mobile devices over the artwork to see it come to life. Voodo’ Fe’s show is free to all visitors of Chelsea Market and is on display throughout the entirety of the Market’s main concourse through the end of March 2021.
Courtesy of the artist
The work of Rashid Johnson employs a wide range of mediums to explore the themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identity, personal narratives, and materiality. His work often includes diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history. The mosaic Untitled Broken Crowd is composed of handmade ceramics, wood, brass, oyster shells, spray paint, wax, soap, and mirrors the soaring piece spans 14 by 33 feet. Located at 200 Liberty Street at Brookfield Place, visitors will be able to contemplate Johnson’s extraordinary piece mounted in the lobby entrance. The glass facade of the building also allows the piece to be highly visible from the surrounding streets.
Tom Friedman’s stainless steel sculptures are instantly recognizable, like a modern-day, oversized Giacommeti sculpture. You may have previously seen a series of his sculptures along the Park Avenue malls between 2015 and 2016. Now, at the entrance to Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens, you’ll find his work, Looking Up.
Described as a “quasi-human figure gazing up to the heavens,” Looking Up was created from crushed aluminum foil pans through lost wax casting which keeps the imprint of the original materials on the steel. Looking Up will be on view until March 19, 2021. Also on view at Rockefeller Center’s main plaza and in the underground concourse is Hiba Schahbaz’ site-specific exhibition, “In My Heart,” which features prints of a mythological garden.
We love art exhibitions in unlikely places, and there may be no place more unlikely than the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The latest installation is inside the Six Summit Gallery, on the first floor of the bus terminal’s South Wing.
The exhibition “Journey to the Sky” showcases fifteen local and regional artists, eight from New York City, and others from New Jersey and Connecticut (with a handful from outside the area including California and abroad.
You can take a local historic landmark with a visit into Blackwell House. The house is open to the public Wednesday thru Sunday from11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed 2-3 p.m.)
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
One Broadway
No entries for this building across from Battery Park.
This was the ticket office on the ground floor for the
United States Lines, Transatlantic shipping.
There were separate entrances for First Class and Cabin Class Passengers.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
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