All Photos By Gail
Even in the steady drizzle that fell over Central Park on the day I snapped these photos, Monira Al Qadiri’s new public art sculpture First Sun looked radiant. Installed at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the park’s southeast entrance, the 17-foot-tall work commands the space with an otherworldly presence that feels both ancient and futuristic.
Continue reading First Sun By Monira Al Qadiri Radiates at Doris C. Freedman Plaza
All Photos By Gail
Twice annually — in the spring and then again in late summer — New York’s Public Art Fund installs a new site-specific artwork in Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza, and it’s always fun and exciting to see that the next sculpture will be. However, with the recently- installed Parabolic Light, a translucent magenta obelisk by artist Fred Eversley, New Yorkers will get to enjoy its reflective glow for an entire year!
Continue reading Eye On Design: Parabolic Light By Fred Eversley in Central Park
All Photos by Gail Worley
Bharti Kher (b. 1969, London, UK) connects New Delhi and New York with this nearly 18 foot tall bronze Universal Mother figure, entitled Ancestor (2022) which is her most ambitious artwork today. Its source is a miniature statue from the artist’s “intermediaries“ series, assembled by recomposing broken clay figurines. Kher finds these small objects in secondhand markets in India, where she moved in 1992 after being raised and educated in the United Kingdom. Continue reading Bharti Kher’s Ancestor in Doris C. Freedman Plaza
All Photos By Gail
Gilded monuments and bronze statues evoke the public art of a bygone era, though we’ve recently been reminded of the potent symbolic value they still hold. Artist Gillian Wearing (b. 1963, Birmingham, England) has been fascinated by these sculptures since childhood. For her, there’s something uncanny about a human form that appears immovable and changeless in a public setting. Wearing has alwasy made art about people, usually presented in unexpected ways, in photography, video, and more recently, sculpture.
Continue reading Statue of Diane Arbus in Doris C. Freedman Plaza
All Photos By Gail
Mark Manders’ Tilted Head is a work of fiction. It has the appearance of unfired clay combined with everyday objects but in fact is made entirely of cast bronze. The cracks and fissures that cover its surface imply an organic process of drying and decay, yet its metal form is fixed.
It might suggest an incomplete model, abandoned in the artist’s studio, if not for the fact that its colossal size and civic location lend it the air of a grand monument. Eyes shut, the androgynous figure’s mask-like features are at rest, undisturbed by an abrupt slice through a third of its face. The unfinished side of the head is held as if in a splint by wooden planks, one tied with rope.
At the back, chairs and a suitcase, all slightly reduced in size, protrude from a mass of formless material. These shifts in scale, unexplained objects, and trompe l’oeil bronze effects alter our perception and spark the imagination.
Back of Sculpture, Detail
Mark Manders (b. 1968, The Netherlands) has been interested in the human figure throughout his career, and is particularly fascinated with the head, which he sometimes depicts detached from the body and juxtaposed with different elements. These heads are always stylized representations rather than individualized portraits.
His approach creates a paradoxical sense of both immediacy and timelessness, of something newly made with fresh clay yet belonging to the traditions of classical statuary. With Tilted Head, Manders has rendered a compelling fiction of human form that inhabits a poetic space between representation and abstraction, serenity and rupture, life and mortality.
Mark Manders’ Tilted Head is Curated by Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume. It Will be on Display at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, Adjacent to Central Park, Through September 1st, 2019.
Update: I was near the Park over the Memorial Day weekend and got this new shot of the sculpture with Summer’s lush greenery in the background!
