"Lightness of Being" - Whimsical and Playful Sculptures at City Hall Park

Public Art Fund presents a new art installation called "Lightness of Being" at City Hall Park (Broadway and Chambers Street) in Lower Manhattan. This exhibition brings together the work of eleven international artists. It features sculptures of very different scales and materials, as well as a weekly performance. Significant recent works by senior figures such as Daniel Buren (b. 1938) and Franz West (1947 - 2012) are shown alongside pieces by emerging and mid-career artists including Alicja Kwade (b. 1979) and Olaf Breuning (b. 1970). In different ways, all of the works on view share a sense of whimsy and visual invention. In contrast to the more formal traditions of historic statuary and fountains, these public artworks engage us with their conceptual wit, eccentric forms, and imaginative transformation of everyday objects.

A sense of playfulness may be found in the manipulation of scale and mass, where small becomes large, light becomes heavy, and vice versa. Our perceptions may be altered by subtle atmospheres of transparent color or unexpected manipulations of familiar forms. Enormous concrete vegetables make surprising new park benches, while a pair of goofy cowboy hats top off an improbable assemblage of found objects cast in bronze. Whether referring to the history of art, abstract forms, or simply to everyday life, the works of these eleven artists show us that serious art also has its lighter side. The exhibition continues through December 13, 2013. (Description of the exhibition from the Public Art Fund website).

The Busker in Green, "The Ego and the Id"

Last Sunday, we spotted a busker in green, sitting on one of the "stools" of the public art display called "The Ego And The Id" by internationally acclaimed artist FRANZ WEST.  Donning an all green sparkly suit, green hat, sunglasses and gloves, oversized gold bow tie, gold shoes and cane, (with green donation box), the busker looked like he's part of the colorful artwork, the newest and largest aluminum sculpture of West to date. The sculpture is about 20 feet high, consisting of two similar but distinct, brightly colored, looping abstract forms, one bubble gum pink and the other alternating blocks of blue, green, orange, and yellow. Each of the forms curve up at the bottom creating stools that invite passersby to stop, take a seat, and directly engage with the artwork. The sculpture is located at the Doris Freedman Plaza near the entrance to Central Park, and will be on display until August 23.

THE EGO AND THE ID, Franz West's New Public Art

The new public art at the Doris Freedman Plaza in Central Park is the colorful sculpture called THE EGO AND THE ID by Austrian artist FRANZ WEST. This piece is on display until March 2010. His other smaller sculptures are on display at the MOMA.

From publicartfund.org

"The Ego and the Id" is internationally acclaimed artist Franz West's newest and largest aluminum sculpture to date. Soaring 20 feet high, the piece consists of two similar but distinct, brightly colored, looping abstract forms, one bubble gum pink and the other alternating blocks of blue, green, orange, and yellow. Each of the forms curve up at the bottom creating stools that invite passersby to stop, take a seat, and directly engage with the artwork. The sculpture is only truly complete once the viewer interacts with the work. The Ego and the Id is consistent with the artist's overarching desire to produce sociable environments for viewing art using his signature combination of whimsy and monumentality.

Created specifically for West's first comprehensive American retrospective this past fall at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Ego and the Id borrows its name from one of Sigmund Freud's best known texts, in which he explores the ego's battle with three forces: the id, the super-ego, and the outside world. Removing the gallery walls heightens the connection between West's work and Freud's work, allowing these forces to intermingle with the streets of New York City as a backdrop.

Franz West began his career in mid-1960s Vienna during the height of a local movement called Actionism. His earliest sculptures, performances, and collages were a reaction to this movement, in which artists engaged in displays of radical public behavior intended to shake up art-world passivity. In the early 1970s, West began making a series of small, portable sculptures called "Adaptives" ("Paßstücke"). The Ego and the Id is in many ways an oversized version of an "Adaptive." The sculpture also directly relates to the artist's furniture installations, which transform galleries, museums, and public spaces into lounge-like environments. West has described the correlation between his plaster objects and furniture installations as a way to put dreams on earth; "The Adaptives would be the dream and the chairs and tables would be the Earth."

About Franz West

Franz West lives and works in Vienna, where he was born in 1947. He has exhibited internationally for more than three decades in galleries and museums, and at major festivals including Documenta IX (1992) and Documenta X (1997), Kassel, Germany; Sculpture Projects in Münster (1997); and the Venice Biennale (1988, 1993, 1997, 2003, 2007). His first major American retrospective, Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008, debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2008), and then traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2009). His work has been exhibited at Gagosian Gallery, New York (2008); Gagosian Gallery, London (2006); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2003); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2003); and Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2001). He had a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1997.

Location and Directions

Subways: N, R to Fifth Avenue; 4, 5, 6 to 59th Street/Lexington Avenue.
The work is free to the public and is on view daily.