Flashback- NYC Public Art- Davina Semo- “Reverberation”

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 132026
 

Today’s flashback is to Davina Semo‘s public art installation Reverberation in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Curated by Daniel S. Palmer and organized by Public Art Fund, the sculptures were on view from August 2020 until April of 2021.

From Public Art Fund about the work-

A ringing bell organizes our civic life, inviting us to come together in public space. Its unmistakable sound marks the hours, calls us to assemble, alerts us to danger, and announces momentous occasions. These and other modes of public address can unify communities and define the auditory landscape of our city, even when all else is silent and still.

Davina Semo (b. 1981, Washington, DC) has created five cast-bronze bells to be rung by visitors in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, recalling the maritime communication once common at this waterfront site. While their percussive function is familiar, the traditional bell form has been reimagined by the artist as an elongated streamlined sculpture that dangles aloft from a heavy industrial galvanized steel frame. The holes she has drilled through each bell create constellations of light in their darkened interiors and staccato patterns on their exterior shells. These arrangements give them unique identities that are characterized through their evocative titles: Reflector, Singer, Dreamer, Listener, and Mother. Their distinctive voices are also expressed in the subtle nuances in their tones when rung.

Semo’s bells are coated with a lustrous pearlescent paint that glows hot orange to evoke the international color of urgent alarm—meant to heighten our attention in precarious times. During this turbulent year, auditory interventions have characterized our collective experience, whether through the evening cheers for essential workers or the chanting voices of protesters demanding justice. The exhibition builds upon this moment, encouraging audiences to add their own contribution to our urban soundscape. Ultimately, Semo intends for these bells to sound an optimistic note. As we ring out the old and ring in the new, each bell reverberates in concert with its neighbors, creating a collective resonance together.

In this video she and the curator discuss the work and you can see more of the installation-

 

Flashback- NYC Public Art- Huma Bhabha at Brooklyn Bridge Park

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Oct 102025
 

Today’s flashback is to Huma Bhabha‘s spooky figures for Before The End, which was on view until March of this year at Brooklyn Bridge Park.  It is just one of the many projects organized by Public Art Fund.

From Public Art Fund about the work-

With the ominous title Before the End, Huma Bhabha (b. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan) sets the stage to evoke mythologies as old as humankind. Conceived for Brooklyn Bridge Park, Bhabha’s four monumental painted and patinated bronzes were cast from carved cork and skull fragments. The mysterious figures recall ancient effigies cut into tombstones, their surfaces evoking centuries of eroded sediment and stone. Yet, unlike a tomb, these four-sided vertical forms stand elevated above the earth, their bones open to the sky.

“Before the End” is a title borrowed from the writings of Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1184–1264), whose medieval imagination sparked with supernatural and apocalyptic visions. Today, the related popular genres of horror and science fiction continue to inspire Bhabha, as does art history from antiquity to the present day. Her rough-hewn figures are ambiguous—are they emerging or trapped within, rising from the depths of the earth or returning to the underworld? Set amidst an expansive landscape where the natural and man-made converge, Bhabha’s sculptures captivate through contradiction, seemingly forged in geological time yet animated with a visceral sense of immediacy.

 

 

Brooklyn Public Art- Antony Gormley’s “New York Clearing” at Brooklyn Bridge Park

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 102021
 

NEW YORK CLEARING by Antony Gormley was on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park from 2/4-3/27/20. The work consisted of a single line made of 11 miles of square aluminum tubing that looped and coiled without a beginning or end, “turning itself into an environment for the viewer that counters the grid of modernism and the city with swooping lines of energy”.

This is one of a series of art works that were part of Connect, BTS– a global public art initiative supported by the K-Pop Group BTS and organized by a group of curators under the direction of independent curator Daehyung Lee. The project took place in five cities on four continents with 22 contributing contemporary artists.