In ancient legend, Pegasus is the “mythical creature who sprang from the blood of Medusa’s neck.” In famed contemporary artist Damien Hirst’s version, Pegasus is a flying horse encrusted completely with crystals residing in the Brasserie of Light, the Martin Brudnizki-designed restaurant in the British department store Selfridges. The sculpture, standing at twenty-four feet with a thirty-foot wingspan, is Hirst’s largest artwork in London, but isn’t the first time he has used this mythical creature in his work. Businessman Richard Caring says of his latest restaurant in Vogue UK: "The Brasserie of Light is a new look spectacle where the input of Damien Hirst, Martin Brudnizki and the absolute strength of Selfridges; this mix has resulted in what I believe to be something very beautiful. It is about light, make-believe and dreams." Hirst explains: “I love the myth of the Pegasus and this is such an exciting project and I love the scale of it. I hope it’s going to look like something beautiful from another world.”
Museum of the Dog
In honor of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this week, and, you know, because dogs are just so wonderful, we visited the recently opened American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. This museum features over 200 pieces in their collection including incredible paintings, sculptures, and photographs, all celebrating “the human-canine relationship.” Highlights (apart from the adorable doggies above) include a 30-million-year-old dog fossil, a terracotta paw print from a Roman archaeological dig, and a Victorian-era dog cart for children. There is also a digital exhibit that will snap a picture and tell you what dog breed you most resemble. I got Doberman Pinscher—loyal, fearless, and alert. Sounds about right.
Mom-and-Pops of the L.E.S.
“Mom-and-Pops of the L.E.S.” is a mixed media installation that celebrates small, family owned shops in the Lower East Side, most of which have shuttered. The wood frame structure, by architectural and interior photographers Karla and James Murray, features four nearly life-size and incredibly realistic photographs of a bodega, coffee shop/luncheonette, vintage store, and newsstand. In creating the piece, they wanted to recognize the “unique and irreplaceable contribution made to New York by small, often family-owned businesses” and celebrate places that “helped bring the community together through people’s daily interactions.” The installation is on view in Seward Park in the Lower East Side through July 2019.
In Dreams Awake
In Dreams Awake features six large-scale, figural sculptures by Hudson Valley-based artist Kathy Ruttenberg on the Broadway Malls between 64th and 157th Streets. In her first major outdoor installation, Ruttenberg combines human, animal, and plant forms to allow “viewers a moment to escape from New York's urban intensity with dreamlike fables derived from rural settings.” The pieces are made of a variety of sculptural media including patinated bronze, glass mosaic, transparent cast resin, and LED lighting. I had a chance to visit “Ms. Mighty Mouse” on 79th Street and “In Sync” on 72nd Street. Ruttenberg encourages viewers to come up with their own narrative and “multi-layered meaning” of each piece. I think “Ms. Mighty Mouse” is protecting a walnut she found for the winter against other pedestrians who are trying to steal it (but I don’t know what happen to her arms, that’s very concerning!) and “In Sync” tells the story of a tree nymph and half man-half deer who are in love but are walking to the train to get to their desk jobs even though they dream of running off to the country. In Dreams Awake is on display at various points on the Broadway Malls through February 2019. What’s your interpretation?
Between Two Worlds
Escher X nendo | Between Two Worlds is a visually stunning exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (known as NGV) in Melbourne featuring over 150 preparatory sketches, drawings, woodcuts, mezzotints, and lithographs of famed Dutch artist M. C. Escher along with work by the internationally-acclaimed Japanese design studio nendo. The pairing is appropriate since both Escher and Oki Sato, nendo’s founder and principal designer, “share common interests in their love of spatial manipulation, optical illusions and playful visual devices.” In this exhibit, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Sato and his design house nendo have created an immersive installation where visitors can experience Escher’s brilliant 2D graphic world along with nendo’s inventive 3D design world. Sato chose the house shape as a motif for the exhibition because he wanted to create “a house for Escher.” The house motif is repeated in various formats in the exhibition rooms and playfully interspersed with Escher’s own works. In the exhibition’s largest room (the above photo), a grid of black-and-white houses with both open and closed roofs act as a maze that forces visitors to walk through the space to discover tabletop light-boxes displaying works by Escher. Sato says: "I sort of feel like I became best friends with Escher, even though I never met him.” Visitors to the exhibit might feel the same. Escher X nendo is on display at the NGV International through April 7, 2019.
Rose III
Rose III by German artist Isa Genzken was permanently installed earlier this fall at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan. Weighing 1,000 pounds and standing over twenty-six feet tall, the yellow rose is forged from painted steel and is based on an actual rose that the artist herself picked, according to ArtNet. The sculpture was developed for production at her foundry Kunstgeisserei in St. Gallen, Switzerland. For Genzken, who has worked in various mediums, giant flowers have been a recurring theme for her. Laura Hoptman, executive director of the Drawing Center, tells ArtNet: “The Rose is both an homage to a city that Genzken knows and loves, and a strong statement for unity and equality that every passerby in this city of millions can enjoy.”
Full Steam Ahead
Artist Arlene Shechet has created a new site-specific installation at Madison Square Park featuring a series of new sculptures in porcelain, wood, steel, and cast iron installed around and within the emptied circular reflecting pool. Initially inspired by memories of a sunken living room in her grandparents’ apartment, Shechet wants visitors to step down into the reflecting pool to “linger and reflect.” In her sculptures for the installation, she uses forms that reflect her interest in historical decorative arts and references flora and fauna, including a lion’s head and paw, a bird’s colossal feather, and tree-like sculptures and branches. “My hope has been to reimagine the hardscape of the Park with delight and surprise,” Shechet says. “New Yorkers rely on the sidewalks, the pavement, and the street as the core of their urban lives. Full Steam Ahead becomes a lively and human amphitheater, softening the hardscape through sculptural intervention evocative of 18th-century garden landscapes.”
ChalkFIT 2018
Every fall senior illustration students at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) create temporary murals at Seventh Avenue and West 28th Street, just down the block from our office. This year over fifty students interpreted the theme, "The future of the human experience." In addition to the yearly theme, the individual murals were inspired by everything from robots and technology, science fiction horror, and the immigrant crisis, to kewpie babies and propaganda art. Visitors can download the Arilyn AR App (on iTunes and Google Play) on their smartphone to enjoy the animation and augmented reality features of the murals.
Somos 11 Millones/We Are 11 Million
Somos 11 Millones/We Are 11 Million by Andrea Bowers (with Movimiento Cosecha)
Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers uses video, drawing, and installation pieces to combine art and activism in the struggle for social justice. For this piece on the High Line, Bowers collaborated with the immigrant rights activist group Movimiento Cosecha to write a slogan in support of DREAMers. The neon sign reading “Somos 11 Millones / We Are 11 Million” references the number of undocumented immigrants in the US. The piece is part of a group exhibition on the High Line that looks at the “power of art to change society, the role of art in public space, and whether art can be a form of protest.”
Wind Sculpture (SG) I
Wind Sculpture (SG) I, by the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, attempts to capture the invisible (in this case, the wind) in a moment of time. The fiberglass sculpture depicts a piece of fabric caught in a gust of wind, part of his “second generation” (SG) of artworks that explore the theme of making known the invisible. Resembling a painted West African fabric, the artwork "evokes a sense of freedom and possibility, which for the artist represents the originality of the hybrid." Shonibare, who split his childhood between England and Nigeria, regards himself as "a cultural hybrid, a product of complex and layered relationships forged by centuries of global trade, migration, politics, and cultural exchange." Through his artwork he invites us to "look beyond appearances and assumptions about identity." The beautiful piece is on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza (in the southeast corner of Central Park) through October 14, 2018.