NYC Public Art- Pamela Rosenkranz- “Old Tree”

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 062024
 

Old Tree, the sculpture pictured above, was created by Pamela Rosenkranz for the High Line in NYC.

From the High Line website–

For the third High Line Plinth commission, Rosenkranz presents Old Tree, a bright red-and-pink sculpture that animates myriad historical archetypes wherein the tree of life connects heaven and earth. The tree’s sanguine color resembles the branching systems of human organs, blood vessels, and tissue, inviting viewers to consider the indivisible connection between human and plant life. Old Tree evokes metaphors for the ancient wisdom of human evolution as well as a future in which the synthetic has become nature. On the High Line—a contemporary urban park built on a relic of industry—Old Tree raises questions about what is truly “artificial” or “natural” in our world. Made of man-made materials and standing at a height of 25 feet atop the Plinth, it provides a social space, creating shade while casting an ever-changing, luminous aura amid New York’s changing seasons.

Pamela Rosenkranz creates sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations that reflect on the human need to anthropomorphize our surroundings in order to understand them. In doing so, she investigates the codes through which people give meaning to the natural world. Her projects center synthetic materials created in the image of nature: a swimming pool filled with viscous fluid, collections of mineral water bottles filled with silicone, or a kitchen faucet streaming water colored with E131 “sky blue” synthetic dye. Color is paramount for Rosenkranz, who employs fabricated colors intended to reflect unblemished and idealized nature. She elaborates on the condition of the body as a malleable system. Questioning the worldview that centers human beings, Rosenkranz addresses our relentless attempts to domesticate and tame the other living beings around us, as well as our own bodies.

Flashback- NYC Public Art- Raúl de Nieves on the High Line

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 302024
 

Raúl de Nieves created these sculptures for the group exhibition The Musical Brain, located on the High Line in NYC in 2021.

From the High Line’s website about the exhibition-

The Musical Brain is a group exhibition that reflects on the power music has to bring us together. The exhibition is named after a short story by the Argentine contemporary writer César Aira, and explores the ways that artists use music as a tool to inhabit and understand the world. The featured artists approach music through different lenses—historical, political, performative, and playful—to create new installations and soundscapes installed throughout the park.

Traditionally, music is thought of as an art form we construct ourselves. With different organizing rules, instruments, and traditions across cultures, music has underpinned essential collective moments in societies for as long as we know. But music is also the way that we hear the world around us. Often used to described nature (wind whistling through trees), the cosmos (in the Music of the Spheres, or musica universalis), and even the built industrial environment (the rhythmic lull of a train car), music is the order we project onto a cacophonous world. Humans seek order and patterns but also relish chaos and noise; in many ways, music becomes the way that we can experience both at the same time.

The artists in this exhibition listen closely to the sonic world and explore the different temporal, sculptural, social, and historical dimensions of the ways we make music, and the ways we listen. They wonder what stories discarded objects tell when played, what happens when a railway spike becomes a bell, and how the youth of our generation sing out warnings to save our planet. They remind us that music is a powerful tool for communication, especially in times when spoken language fails us. The sonic brings us together to celebrate, protest, mark the passage of time, and simply be together.

And about the artist and this work-

Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Morelia, Mexico) makes colorful sculptures and elaborately costumed performances. Having learned to sew and crochet as a child, de Nieves collages found fabrics onto mannequins and coveralls to create fantastical figures that he displays as sculptures and wears in musical performances. De Nieves installs three of these figures sitting on benches on the High Line. The sculptures reference the costumes musicians wear to become their larger-than-life personas and interrupt the crowds with their magical splendor.