NYC Public Art- The High Line- Rosana Paulino

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art
May 092025
 

The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night by Rosana Paulino was recently commissioned by the High Line in New York and is on view until December 2025.

From the High Line’s website about the artist and the work-

Rosana Paulino’s practice spans drawing, painting, suture, printmaking, collage, sculpture, and installation. Her work foregrounds social, ethnic, and gender issues, taking particular care to explore the lasting legacy of slavery and the history of both racial and gender-based violence in Brazil. The artist weaves personal, scientific, and historical archives throughout her work, using these materials to demonstrate and then deconstruct violent colonial structures, particularly as they relate to Afro-Brazilian women. Taking into account the impact these archives and memories have on collective values and belief systems, Paulino examines the construction of myths—not only as an aesthetic pillar but also as a key influence on cultural consciousness.

The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night is a continuation of the artist’s mangrove series, which depicts tree-women as a mythological archetype and symbol for the Brazilian biome. Paulino notes that mangroves, like the country’s Black and Indigenous people, have been mistreated and exploited. The artist highlights the symbolic meaning inherent in this ecosystem: It is where life begins, as a home for countless species and as a blue carbon reservoir, and where life ends, due to the decomposition of the mangrove itself. In The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night, Paulino re-imagines this duality between life and death as day and night. From left to right, the color of the sky fades from daylight to a deeper, midnight hue. In lieu of gilded halos traditionally seen in European representations of holy figures, the tree-women’s heads are framed by halos resembling the sun and the moon. Similarly, the animals surrounding the goddesses also reference the transition from day to night. On the left side of the composition, Paulino depicts two diurnal birds native to the mangrove biome: the white egret and, in the tree-woman’s hands, the scarlet ibis. To her right, the other goddess holds an owl and is flanked by two bats, both of which are nocturnal. Together, these elements present a rich, new mythological framework for the mangrove, offering a departure from depictions shaped by colonization and exploitation.

NYC Public Art- High Line- Kapwani Kiwanga

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Glasswork, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Dec 122024
 

The pictures above are of Kapwani Kiwanga’s sculpture On Growth, commissioned for the High Line in NYC. This sculpture will be on view until February of 2025.

From the High Line about the artist and the work-

Kapwani Kiwanga is a conceptual artist working across film, performance, sculpture, and installation. Through exhaustive research into topics including colonial history, social segregation, and marginalized stories, Kiwanga constructs artworks that tease apart power imbalances and the imperceptible nuances that comprise the aesthetics of power. Often grounding her projects in architecture and horticulture, Kiwanga has created artworks that engage a wide variety of subjects including mono-crop agriculture in Tanzania, the oil and fracking industries, ceremonies related to key moments in African independence, and historical racist lantern laws from New England and New York. In her ongoing work Flowers for Africa, Kiwanga installs fresh arrangements of cut flowers that are replicas of bouquets visible in archival images of the inauguration ceremonies of African countries.

For the High Line, Kiwanga presents On Growth, a sculpture of a fern encased in glass. The multi-faceted case is constructed from dichroic glass, which captures and transforms the light that passes through it, changing tone and color as it’s viewed from different vantage points. The work references Wardian cases, a predecessor of the terrarium, which were used to transport uprooted plants to Europe from overseas, allowing those species to continue to thrive amid London’s polluted air in the late 19th century. These enclosures resembled jewelry cases at the time and, similarly, often protected treasures from distant lands. On Growth draws on the colonial histories of institutional and commercial botanic nurseries that heavily influenced the scientific understanding of plants and horticulture of today.

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.

Flashback- NYC Public Art- Midabi

 Art, Artists, Conceptual Art, Palm Springs, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Feb 092024
 

This sculpture, The Only Other, 2021, by the artist Midabi, was located in Union Square Park in NYC from June 2021- June 2022.

It is currently located adjacent to Palm Springs Art Museum in California.

Brooklyn Public Art- Ken Rush’s “Poolevator” at Industry City

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art
Sep 042023
 

Brooklyn artist Ken Rush’s Poolevator is one of several works located in Industry City– organized by The Collision Project.

From The Collision Project about the work-

This installation represents both the reality and fantasy. The reality is depicted in the inspiring monumental architecture, while the fantasy emerges in the joyful addition of a swimming club with a celebration of swimming, sunbathing, recreation and play. For Rush, the work is a homage to Impressionist painters like Monet and Suerat, and the way that they depicted urban and rural pleasures. This is a group project between Rush and three of his students from High School Visual Arts at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights.

NYC Public Art- Hank Willis Thomas- “Unity” in Brooklyn (and artist talk at The Broad)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Events, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 182022
 

Unity, was created by Hank Willis Thomas in 2019 as part of the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program. The 22.5 foot sculpture is a replica of NBA player Joel Embiid’s right arm.

From the artist on the work (via Downtown Brooklyn)-

“The sculpture is an homage to and celebration of the unique and multi-faceted character of the borough of Brooklyn. The spirit of Brooklyn has always been about upward mobility and connection to roots. The large-scale sculpture of a bronze arm pointing toward the sky is intended to convey to a wide audience a myriad of ideas about individual and collective identity, ambition, and perseverance”.

Thomas will be speaking with UCLA professor and author Robin D.G. Kelley today (9/18/22) at 2pm The Broad Museum about his art practice, his activism, and his piece in the museum’s current exhibition, This is Not America’s Flag.

The program will be live-streamed on The Broad’s website and their Facebook page.

Sophie Calle at Greenwood Cemetery Brooklyn

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 152022
 

Artist Sophie Calle’s Here Lie The Secrets of the Visitors of the Green-Wood Cemetery, a 25 year long public artwork. The project debuted on April 29th and 30th, 2017.

From Creative Time’s website-

To inaugurate the project, the public was invited to Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to privately unburden and inter their most intimate confessions.

During the two-day opening, in a setting nestled among the mausoleums and monuments of Green-Wood’s verdant rolling hills, visitors transcribed their secrets onto paper, and deposited them into the earth below, through a slot on a marble obelisk of Calle’s design. The artist was on hand during the two-day event to receive some visitors’ secrets.

The two-day performance was free and open to the public. Guests were invited to spend the day exploring the sculptures and monuments throughout Green-Wood, a tradition that dates back to the early 1800s. Free maps of the cemetery, specially designed to accompany Calle’s installation, were be available. Guided walking tours emphasizing the cemetery’s symbols and iconography were offered at no cost.

Visitors to the Cemetery can now see Calle’s installation during regular cemetery hours and independently deposit secrets into the marble obelisk. Calle has also pledged to return periodically over the next 25 years, each time the grave is filled, to exhume and cremate them in a ceremonial bonfire service and moment of remembrance.

Everyone has a secret to tell, now there’s a place to put one of yours.

 

Simone Leigh’s “Brick House” at The High Line Plinth NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 242021
 

 

From The High Line’s information page on this work-

Simone Leigh presents Brick House, a 16-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman with a torso that combines the forms of a skirt and a clay house. The sculpture’s head is crowned with an afro framed by cornrow braids, each ending in a cowrie shell. Brick House is the inaugural commission for the High Line Plinth, a new landmark destination for major public artworks in New York City. This is the first monumental sculpture in Leigh’s Anatomy of Architecture series, an ongoing body of work in which the artist combines architectural forms from regions as varied as West Africa and the Southern United States with the human body. The title comes from the term for a strong Black woman who stands with the strength, endurance, and integrity of a house made of bricks.

Brick House references numerous architectural styles: Batammaliba architecture from Benin and Togo, the teleuk dwellings of the Mousgoum people of Cameroon and Chad, and the restaurant Mammy’s Cupboard in Natchez, Mississippi. The sculpture contrasts sharply against the landscape it inhabits, where glass-and-steel towers shoot up from among older industrial-era brick buildings, and where architectural and human scales are in constant negotiation. Resolutely facing down 10th Avenue, Leigh’s powerful Black female figure challenges us to consider the architecture around us, and how it reflects customs, values, priorities, and society as a whole.

Leigh works across sculpture, video, installation, and social practice, stitching together references from different historical periods and distant geographical locations. As a sculptor, Leigh works predominantly in ceramics—a medium that she mastered early in her career—continually pushing the boundaries of her chosen material by working in new methods and larger scales. In her intersectional practice, Leigh focuses on how the body, society, and architecture inform and reveal one another. She examines the construction of Black female subjectivity, both through specific historical figures such as Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham, and more generally through overlapping historical lineages across Europe, Africa, the US, and the Caribbean.

The High Line’s website also has some excellent videos and additional information on the making of the sculpture well worth checking out.  This work was on view until May of 2021.

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.

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