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Statues Settle In at NYC City Hall

Statues Settle In at NYC City Hall

Since Wednesday, an aluminum woman is joyfully resting in the grass of City Hall Park. Among her well-set figurative friends are a bronze giant, an octopus man, and a couple of luminous neon creatures. The new sculptures are part of The Public Art Fund’s yearly exhibit in the park, an ongoing project for more than 30 years with the aim of making visitors experience art more directly.

This year’s show, named Statuesque, brings together a group of six artists from four different nations­. The ten works experiment with the sculptural tradition of the human figure, and are installed along the park’s pathways and on lawns. “City Hall Park is really a great backdrop for this art,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the opening. “The placement invites people to get up close and personal with these more contemporary figures and sculptures.”

The featured artists are Huma Bhabha, Aaron Curry, Thomas Houseago, Matthew Monahan, Rebecca Warren, and Pawel Althamer. Never displayed together before, the pieces all tend towards abstraction over realism, and texture over refinement of finish––some exuberant, many robot-like and other almost gruesome. “It is unfiltered, it is memorable and it is immediate,” chief curator and director of The Public Art Fund Nicholas Baume concluded. New for this year is a free cellphone audio tour via an iPhone app.


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