calendario eventi  :: 

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10/5/2014

Four exhibitions

Socrates Sculpture Park, New York

Žilvinas Kempinas

Scarecrow is a new site-specific installation by artist Žilvinas Kempinas and the largest installation in Socrates’ 28-year history. Minimal and magical, the sculpture will be a 250-foot-long, thirteen-foot-high kinetic pathway composed of 200 stainless steel, mirrored poles connecting energetic slopes of silver Mylar ribbon overhead. With two simple elements – poles and tape – Scarecrow activates the invisible forces of nature.

Scarecrow will reflect its surrounding environment and thus will continuously change throughout the exhibition. The perpetual motion of the ribbon, as it responds to the wind of its environment, will echo the natural flowing of the nearby East River, while the mirrored material will reflect momentary shifts of light and sky like a shimmering horizon along the waterfront.

Blanketing a large portion of the 4.7 acre park, Scarecrow will be Kempinas’ first major outdoor installation in the United States. Kempinas is internationally acclaimed for his kinetic installations and controlled, minimalist works; notably, the artist represented Lithuania at the 2009 Venice Biennale with a site-specific installation entitled Tube, and more recently Double O at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010), and Slow Motion at Museum Tinguely, Switzerland (2013). Kempinas recently created his first outdoor sculpture for the Echigo Tsumari Art Field In Japan (2012), which was subsequently shown as part of his solo exhibition at Museum Tinguely. That work, made from Japanese snow-measuring posts and bird-repellant ribbons, was titled Kakashi – or “Scarecrow” in Japanese. At Socrates Sculpture Park, the artist’s latest Scarecrow expands on Kakashi in scale, shape, and setting.

Unlike his large-scale installations in museums, galleries, and biennials, where the artist carefully calculates and manipulates artificial elements to create a desired effect, Kempinas’s outdoor sculptures are experimental and adapt to fluctuating weather conditions. While this fluidity creates endless possibilities for effect, the artist maintains a meticulousness in his process, establishing a series of set conditions upon which nature can play. From a distance Scarecrow will appear as a monumental single sculpture that is at once impressively precise and brutally horizontal. As you move closer to the installation, however, Scarecrow will become enlivened with motion and sound as it captures the wind and pulls the surrounding landscape into itself.

Scarecrow is made possible, in part, by generous gifts from the Lewben Art Foundation and Martin Z. Margulies.

The 2014 Exhibition Program at Socrates Sculpture Park is made possible by major support from the following: Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Endowment Fund, Cowles Charitable Trust, Mark di Suvero, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Agnes Gund, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Lambent Foundation, Ivana Mestrovic, Plant Specialists, Shelley and Donald Rubin, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation. 2014 Exhibitions are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and by public funds from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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Paweł Althamer

Queen Mother of Reality by Paweł Althamer is a monumental, mixed media sculpture of an elegant figure that is peacefully reclining in the shaded southern section of the park overlooking the East River waterfront. Althamer’s sculpture is dedicated to and inspired by “Queen Mother” Dr. Delois Blakely, a U.S. Ambassador of Goodwill to Africa,who has been the Community Mayor of Harlem since she was sworn in by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1995. Queen Mother of Reality serves as a call to highlight the numerous displaced and homeless of New York City – Dr. Blakely’s paramount cause.

Originally built as a part of Althamer’s Performa Commission in 2013, Queen Mother of Reality at Socrates Sculpture Park will act as a platform for creative dialogue and interactive programming, reflecting the park’s commitment to engaging audiences through public art. This spring the sculpture was reassembled by Althamer and his collaborators – a team of artists and community members, including artists Noah Fischer, Roman Stańczak, Rafal Zwirek, and Jim Constanza (aka the Aaron Burr Society), and the artist’s sons Bruno Althamer and Szymon Althamer, as well as members of the community.

Continuing Althamer’s commitment to social collaboration, which underlines most of his work, Socrates and the artist will program workshops, events, and talks throughout the summer that will invoke Dr. Blakely’s pursuits of social justice and community building. The sculpture is situated in the midst of an active community. The park is surrounded by three of the nation’s largest public housing complexes (Astoria, Ravenswood, and Queensbridge Houses), and the local community has been a park stakeholder since its creation in 1986.

The first program is a Mother’s Day celebration during the opening on May 11 from 2pm-6pm, featuring art-making workshops presented by Minor Miracles Foundation and an experimental social project titled Nails Across America by artist Breanne Trammell.

Programming will develop throughout the summer, so please continue to check back for updates.

Queen Mother of Reality is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park in collaboration with Performa, and in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

The Exhibition Program at Socrates Sculpture Park is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charina Endowment Fund, Lambent Foundation, Mark di Suvero, the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Agnes Gund, Ivana Mestrovic, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation.

Queen Mother of Reality is a Performa Commission and was originally presented as part of the Polish Pavilion Without Walls for Performa 13. The commission was generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and Toby Devan Lewis, with additional support from Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), neugerriemschneider (Berlin), Fundacja Sztuka i Współczesność, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, and Polish Ministry of Cultural and National Heritage, Tilton Gallery.

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Austin+Mergold

Presented in partnership with The Architectural League of New York

SuralArk by Jason Timberlake Austin and Aleksandr Mergold,of the Philadelphia-based architectural firm Austin+Mergold, is the winning proposal for Folly 2014, an annual design / build competition co-organized by The Architectural League of New York and Socrates Sculpture Park. This residency and exhibition explores the intersections among architecture, design, and sculpture through an interpretation of the architectural folly. The project was selected from over 170 submissions by a jury of architects and artists, including Chris Doyle, artist; John Hatfield, Socrates Sculpture Park; Enrique Norten, TEN Arquitectos; Lisa Switkin, James Corner Field Operations; and Ada Tolla, LOT-EK.

Conflating the form of an overturned ship and a typical suburban house, SuralArk provides shelter for respite and contemplation for thousands of park visitors this season. More than leisure space, this folly references the biblical form of Noah’s Ark and its final landing on Mount Ararat. As Austin+Mergold state, it is “an imposing, fanciful, yet purposeless structure: a boat without water, a house without inhabitants, a simple hulking mass of a conflicted typology.”

This large-scale installation spans over 50 feet with an elevation of 18 feet, but despite this scale it does not provide escape from the rising water levels at the edge of Socrates park, just merely the suggestion of future or past rescuing. Described by the architects as an “American vernacular interpretation of the original,” SuralArk will be made from readily available dimensional lumber and clad in vinyl siding — a material repeatedly used on nearby Queens residences – and is representative of the increasingly blurred lines between urban and suburban environments, and rural living.

At Socrates, SuralArk will be light permeable and emit a warm glow as the sun bleeds through its surface. The upturned ark echoes the park’s past while considering the future, as a possible escape from rising tides that submerged the park in October 2012 during Super Storm Sandy.

Folly is a competition co-sponsored by The Architectural League and Socrates Sculpture Park that invites emerging architects and designers to propose contemporary interpretations of the architectural folly, traditionally a fanciful, small-scale building or pavilion sited in a garden or landscape to frame a view or serve as a conversation piece.

The 2014 Folly program is made possible by a generous grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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Meschac Gaba

Citoyen du Monde, the park’s spring Broadway Billboard by the Beninese artist Meschac Gaba, is the artist’s vision for a global flag. Created by elongating individual flags from every country in the world into narrow triangles that converge at a central point, this optically spectacular work presents a humorous image of idealism and optimism for resolutions to the difficulties and crises that divide our world. The singularity of each flag is lost in the rhythm of the composition as is the case in the age of globalization where national borders merge into the international. Greeting visitors at the entrance to the park, this large scale utopic graphic broadcasts a message of unity that reflects Socrates’ mission to introduce art to the broadest spectrum of people possible.

Citoyen du Monde is presented courtesy of the artist, Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES, CONTACT:
Katie Denny - 718 956 1819 | kd@socratessculpturepark.or

Opening: May 11, 2014 (2:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Boulevard - Long Island City, NY 11106
SOCRATES IS OPEN EVERYDAY
10:00 AM TO SUNSET
FREE ADMISSION

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