8 Outdoor Art Installations in New York to Get Excited About
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Version 0 of 1. A change of context can turn even the most familiar object into something new. Which is one reason that the city offers so much alfresco art in the summertime: it’s a chance for rediscovery. There’s another reason: it’s hard not to feel the pull of the outdoors when you’ve been stuck inside for months. Artists feel it, too, leaving the four walls of their studios behind for the experience of creating en plein-air. And so now we have a bumper crop of art installations re-enchanting the most familiar public spaces. Here are some of the most promising free exhibitions currently remaking the cityscape. On the lawn outside the Met Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park, the Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir has installed “Armors,” with cast-aluminum versions of three suits of armor from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each is paired with another figurative sculpture (her son was the model). It’s a chance to see some of the Met’s prized collection in a novel fashion. “Normally one sees armors as these beautiful artifacts displayed in glass cases, and you cannot approach them,” said Ms. Thorarinsdottir. But in this case, she said, “You can touch them and feel the energy.” The pairs might seem at first like combatants ready to do battle, as the medieval exterior of the Cloisters looms in the background. But looking closer reveals that the nude androgynous figures are posed in the same stance as the armor. You see the outside and the inside at once, a transformation that manages to illuminate the human fragility and vulnerability in gleaming metal. The president of Iceland, Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, was on hand for the opening of the exhibition, and another prominent voice, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has endorsed the show on Twitter. (Mr. Miranda’s dog could not be reached for comment.) Through Sept. 13 on the Cloisters Lawn in Fort Tryon Park; forttryonparktrust.org. The High Line teems these days, and not just with tourists. Three exhibitions are currently on view. The British artist Phyllida Barlow has installed a reimagined version of “folly,” a work she presented outside the British Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Retitled “prop,” it consists of concrete panels and planks, nodding to the neighborhood’s industrial past and the endless recycling of materials and ideas in art and architecture. “Agora,” a group show spread over the length of the park, includes artists from seven countries addressing the role of art in the public realm. Duane Linklater, an Omaskêko Ininiwak artist from Canada, has installed towering tripodal works that recall the structure of the tepee and contrast starkly with the ever-rising condominium towers surrounding the High Line. Dorothy Iannone’s mural, “I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door,” rises next to the High Line at West 22nd Street, with a trio of colorful Statue of Liberty figures and the final line from Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus.” Through March 2019 on the High Line; art.thehighline.org. To be precise, only one of Jacob Hashimoto’s monumental sculptures on Governors Island will be outdoors: “Never Comes Tomorrow” will fill the landmark archway at Liggett Hall with an assemblage of wooden cubes and steel funnels that evokes a fantastical portal between the island’s stately historic district and the relaxed hills and open fields to the south. Not far away, another Hashimoto work, “The Eclipse” is a floating cloudlike work that will be installed in the St. Cornelius Chapel. It consists of thousands of nearly transparent rice paper kites, enveloping viewers and architecture alike in a nearly consuming fog. St. Cornelius Chapel, owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, will open its doors for the first time since 2013 to welcome the work. It was shown last year during the Venice Biennale. June 2 through Oct. 31 on Governors Island; govisland.com. The photographer John Raymond Mireles has spent the last three years traveling to all 50 states, making portraits of more than 3,000 people along the way, which he displays on fences from Anchorage to Lower Manhattan. Over the course of time, the prints “transitioned from vibrant and shiny to dull and weathered and marred at the hands of vandals,” he wrote on his website. The “Neighbors Project,” as it’s called, aims to nourish a sense of empathy in wary New Yorkers by placing the large-scale prints in highly trafficked areas. Eighty-six of his photographs will be on display along the fence of a park at the corner of Houston Street and Second Avenue. Through July 7 at First Street Green Art Park, corner of Houston Street and 2nd Avenue; firststreetgreenpark.org. Reclamation is a major theme in “Built,” a solo exhibition by the artist Virginia Overton at the Socrates Sculpture Park. Ms. Overton created several new works for this show, incorporating wooden beams, steel trusses and two pickup trucks. The park itself is an oasis of green between the East River shoreline and Long Island City’s industrial zone, making Ms. Overton’s assemblages all the more resonant against the Manhattan skyline. Through Sept. 3 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens; socratessculpturepark.org. The pathways of City Hall Park will welcome visitors with “Out of Thin Air,” an audio work by the Brooklyn-based artist Sari Carel. She conducted workshops for New Yorkers with asthma and similar conditions, capturing the sounds of their breathing and mixing them into a multichannel recording. One aim is to prompt listeners to think anew about people who live with chronic illness. Visitors can experience a guided “eyes-closed” tour on certain days of the immersive sound installation, led by a docent. June 1 through July 8 in City Hall Park; moreart.org. |