Olaf Breuning and the Public Art Fund's "Clouds" in Central Park

Olaf Breuning, in conjunction with the Public Art Fund recently unveiled his art installation called "Clouds" in Central Park at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street. The installation consists of bright blue aluminum clouds held aloft by 35-foot-tall steel supports. 

"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).

Public Art: United Enemies by Thomas Schütte

United Enemies is the title of two bronze sculptures by German artist, Thomas Schütte brought by the Public Art Fund (PAF) to Central Park from March 5 – August 25. The sculptures are installed in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. It is the first U.S. exhibition of the sculptures, which were initially shown at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin in 2011 and then at the Serpentine Gallery in London last year. The sculptural installation consists of a pair of two-headed 13 foot pieces bound together and struggling to tear apart, each supported by three pegs.

Mr. Schütte has described the pieces as part political caricature, the product of a 1992 visit to Rome when he explained "heads of state and others were being exposed and discredited and sent to jail. So the caricature and the satire were a reality.” He explained that the figures were “modeled in isolation but bound in pairs, emerging in parallel."

"They are emotional things that we can all relate to," explained PAF director and chief curator Nicholas Baume. "Think dysfunctional family or simply the battles wihin ourselves. That’s what’s so brilliant about the sculptures. They operate on many different levels." Mr. Baume has said "Thomas Schütte's work always balances the political and personal", and through such light believes they could be seen as 21st-century examples of the distorted countenances on the "character heads" of the 18th-century German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt or the satirical political caricatures of the French artist Honore Daumier.

The Statue of Columbus Up Close and Personal in a Modern New York Living Room Suspended in the Air by Scaffolding

View of the public art installation from Eighth Avenue

The new art installation "Discovering Columbus" by Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi is an 800-square-foot replica of a contemporary living room that is suspended 70 feet in the air supported by scaffolding. The living room surrounds the 13-foot marble statue of Christopher Columbus, which has stood on a granite podium high above the middle of a traffic circle (Columbus Circle) for the past 120 years. The statue, which was created by Gaetano Russo in 1892, appears to stand on a coffee table and is surrounded by several chairs, sofas, a bookcase and flat screen television, just like a living room. Visitors are allowed to lounge on the furniture for a good look at the statue. The wallpaper covering the walls was designed by the artist and features iconic American pop culture figures, such as Mickey Mouse, Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe. Nishi is known for taking a usually inaccessible object and creating a living space around it so visitors can observe the object up close. The exhibit continues through November 18. Visitors can obtain free passes by signing up at the Public Art Fund's website. 

"How I Roll" - Rotating Plane Sculpture By Paola Pivi At Doris Freedman Plaza In Central Park

The Public Art Fund is presenting a new sculpture by Paola Pivi called "How I Roll" at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park. The piece is a modified six-seat Piper Seneca plane that rotates through 360 degrees while held aloft on its wing tips above the sidewalk. The sculpture is part of a series featuring large machines that have been taken out of their usual context including an upside-down helicopter and an overturned tractor-trailer. The public art installation creates the striking and surreal experience of a familiar object perched in an unexpected location doing a very unfamiliar motion. It looks more dramatic in the presence of cars and horse-drawn carriages on the street right below it, as captured in the photo above. The exhibition continues through August 26, 2012.

Statuesque in City Hall Park

Aaron Curry (American, born 1972) Yellow Bird Boy (2010, powder coated aluminum)

Aaron Curry (American, born 1972) Big Pink (2010, powder coated aluminum)

Thomas Houseago (British, born 1972) Untitled - Sprawling Octopus Man (2009, bronze)

Pawel Althamer (Polish, born 1967) and the Nowolipie Group (Poland, est. 2004) Sylwia (2010, aluminum) 

Aaron Curry (American, born 1972) Horned Head Trip (reclining) (2010, powder coated aluminum)

Thomas Houseago (British, born 1972) Untitled - Red Man (2008, bronze)

Huma Bhabha (American, born in Pakistan 1962) The Orientalist (2007, bronze)

Currently on display at the New York City Hall Park in downtown Manhattan are sculptures of a dynamic group of six international artists as they reinvent figurative sculpture for a new era. Statuesque features the works of art by Pawel Althamer, Huma Bhabha, Aaron Curry, Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan, and Rebecca Warren. Photos of some of the artworks were taken yesterday.

From the official website:

The exhibition is the first time these artists have been shown together, revealing a striking interest in the figure that transcends national boundaries. As the first project curated by Public Art Fund's new Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume, Statuesque also marks the New York debut of each work included. In conceivingStatuesque, Baume makes a persuasive argument for the renewed significance of the figure in international contemporary sculpture.

Statuesque celebrates the return of figurative sculpture, but not in the classical sense. Neither literal portraits nor traditional monuments, these works push the expressive potential of sculptural forms and materials. While the approaches and backgrounds of the artists are very different, their work shares a number of key characteristics. They tend towards abstraction over realism, assemblage over the readymade, construction of form over casting from life, and physicality and texture over refinement of finish. Conceptually sophisticated, historically informed, and expressively direct, Statuesque finds in the human figure a sculptural tradition ripe for experimentation.