Often described as a hybrid between art, architecture, design and landscape architecture, Dan Graham’s freestanding partitions and pavilions — made from two-way mirror glass — sometimes create a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic experience. If you’ve never seen his work in person and missed his Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walk About, which was installed at the Met Roof Garden back in 2014, a new exhibit at 303 Gallery entitled Three Models, Three Sizes, Three Price Ranges offers a fun introduction to the full scope of his oeuvre.
I first noticed the Rose Crystal Tower, a new public art installation from globally famous glass artist Dale Chihuly, as I rode past it while I was on the 14th Street bus. The eye-catching pink sculpture was unveiled on October 6th, 2017 and will stay up for one full year, as part of the NYC Parks’ program Art in the Parks (which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year). Art in the Parks is responsible for many notable works of art in public green spaces around the city, including the OY/YO installation in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
While it maintains a semi-translucent quality, the Rose Crystal Tower is not actually made of glass, but rather is composed of Polyvitro crystals and steel. According to an announcement from the Parks Department, Polyvitro is “the artist’s term for a plastic material which he casts into individual chunks which resemble glass, but are lighter and more resilient.” There is a similar sculpture at the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum in Seattle, and you can see a bit of that piece in this photo, which I took when I was there several years ago.
I have walked by the Rose Crystal Tower a few times and have taken photos of it from many different angles and in different lighting. It is always gorgeous.
Check out the difference in the way the individual crystal groupings look in the daytime, as compared with how it looks at night, in the shots above and below.
Detail of the Sculpture at Night
Here are more nighttime shots, where you can really apreciate the interior illumination.
Chihuly’s Rose Crystal Tower is located on the east side of Union Square Park, on the traffic triangle at 15th Street and Park Avenue South. The work will be on display through October 2018, so you have lots of time to see it.
Here’s the Tower on a beautiful spring day (April 29th, 2018) with the cherry blossoms in the background!
Randy Polumbo’s delightful Love Stream Trailer installation at Steven Kasher Gallery was one of our favorite exhibits of 2112, so what a special surprise it was to stumble upon Randy’s latest work in the midst of our very ambitious September 11th Art Crawl!
Traffic Signal
Polumbo’s pop up installation, Tunnel of Love currently resides in the space at 511 West 27th Street formerly occupied by the Paul Kasmin Shop (which is moving locations). That narrow storefront has been transformed into a reflective-surfaced silver space whose walls and contents tend to disorient in the same manner as a carnival fun house attraction, and that is exactly the appeal. The Tunnel of Love pulls you off of the street and immediately immerses you in a fantasy world where everything is source of wonder. People were literally freaking out in this place.
On display are several few Polumbo’s signature blown glass floral lamp sculptures, some of which look more phallic than others.
At the rear of the “Tunnel” are stacked silver fabric cushions that we also saw inside the Love Steam, where you can rest your feet and enjoy the visuals! Also, Selfies!
Ceiling Installation
Randy Polumbo was at the installation on the night I stopped by (the exhibition had just opened the previous evening) and let me tell you, he is handsome like a movie star. I had the chance to talk to him about how much I enjoyed the Love Stream Trailer, and he was very nice and seemed genuinely appreciative that I already knew his art. What a cool guy!
Illuminated Crystal Handbag Video Installation
Randy Polumbo’s Tunnel of Love Installation will be up at 511 West 27th Street (Between 10th and 11th Avenues) Until October 25th, 2014. The space is open late (until 8 PM ) On Wednesdays and Thursdays. Find Out More About the Art of Randy Polumbo at Polumbo Dot Com.
Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout is a site-specific installation by Dan Graham which was installed in April of this year. Comprising curves of steel and two-way mirrored glass set between ivy hedgerows, Graham’s structure is part garden maze, part modernist skyscraper facade. Viewers who enter the work are transformed into performers; in glimpsing their own reflections, they are also made acutely aware of the act of looking.
For the past fifty years Graham has engaged his interest in architecture and the way it structures public space through a multidisciplinary practice encompassing writing, photography, video, performance, and—beginning in the 1970s—sculptural environments of mirrored glass and metal. He calls these hybrid structures “pavilions” after the ornamental buildings that decorate seventeenth- and eighteenth-century formal gardens—architectural fantasies inspired by the ruins of classical antiquity. Continue reading Dan Graham Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (with Günther Vogt) On The Roof of The Met→
New Yorkers: Don’t let all of this snow trap you inside the house for too long, because you have just over week to see the latest exhibit by minimalist sculptor Keith Sonnier, up now at PACE Gallery on West 25th Street. Elysian Plain + Early Works presents 12 works in neon, featuring the first series that Sonnier created in his new studio in Bridgehampton over the past three years and others that go back to the late 60s and early 70s (in fact, a few of the neon and glass pieces in this show looked familiar from Sonnier’s exhibit, 68 – 70 at Mary Boone Gallery from early last year.)
Lobbed Shape (2013)
Detail from Above Sculpture
Alternate Gallery Shot of the Work from the First Photo in This Post
Zig Zag Square (2013)
Neon Wrapping Incandescent (1969)
The piece above is the most beautiful mix of bright pink and baby blue neon, the vibrance which of course can never be fully captured or with point and shoot camera. That’s why you need to see these works in person!
PACE’s rear gallery also features a large, primary colored geometric painting that takes up an entire wall and a few smaller, framed collage pieces from 2013 that could be studies for new Neon Works. Who knows!
Keith Sonnier Elysian Plain + Early Works will be on Exhibit Only Through February 22nd, 2014 at PACE Gallery, Located 510 West 25th Street New York NY 10001.
Photo Above Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery. All Other Photos by Gail.
Randy Polumbo’s Love Stream installation was a last minute addition to this week’s art crawl thanks exclusively to an enticing blurb in the weekend edition of Daily Candy. So, props to Daily Candy for turning us on to a thoroughly squeal-inducing exhibit! Seriously you’ve gotta check this one out!
Love Stream Rear Exterior Shot
In Polumbo’s most ambitious and monumental work to date, the artist has transformed a vintage Airstream aluminum trailer into a stimulating experiential wonderland that is both part amusement park attraction and part Freudian intervention.
It’s Me! In the Love Stream!
Surprisingly, there was not much of a wait to explore the interior of the Love Stream, decked out as it is like Warhol’s Factory in silver upholstered cushions! We want to live in it!
Also part of the exhibit are a series of hand-blown crystal Udder formations (we do not have any photos of those, but they are pretty cool) and techno-organic Wallflowers of glass and aluminum that are illuminated with LEDs to create a bioluminescent frenzy on the gallery walls. Bioluminescence!
Polumbo combines glass and innovative lighting to create environments that speak to our world of pleasure and sensuality. He invites viewers to immerse themselves in an exotic and lurid Garden of Eden blooming with voluptuous hand-blown glass flora sprouting from every surface. As subtly hinted at by the detail on this sculpture, seen below, Polumbo has previously created art with repurposed sex toys, and his work is also on exhibit at NYC’s Museum Of Sex. We recommend a visit there as well.
Randy Polumbo’s Love Stream will be on Exhibit Through September 29th, 2012, so don’t delay in planning your visit! Steven Kasher Gallery is Located at 521 West 23rd Street, Street Level, New York, NY 10011. Gallery Hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are presenting a major exhibition of the gorgeous blown glass sculptures by artist Dale Chihuly through September 28, 2008 at both the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor.
My old college pal, Vince just attended the exhibit at the de Young and sent me nearly a dozen astounding and utterly breathtaking photos he took. As you can see, there is really nothing like these sculptures on earth, and they must be seen to be believed. I’ve been a huge fan of Dale Chihuly for years and personally cannot wait until an exhibition of his work comes to a museum in NYC!
(For more photos like these, check out my visit to Seattle’s Chihuly Garden & Glass Museum)!
