Is it possible that the secret to successful public art is to appeal to artists who don’t usually do so?
It can be roughly described as the ethos of Jacob King, the artistic adviser at the center of a new dual display of works by Charles Ray and Christopher Wool at the eight-acre Manhattan West shopping complex, owned and developed by Brookfield Properties.
“My whole talk at Brookfield from the beginning was that if you’re going to do commissions with artists for public places, I think it’s really important to work with artists who don’t do a lot,” King said. at Artnet News. “There are a lot of great artists who work a lot in lobbies, but when you put an artist in a lobby that people expect to see there, they often ignore it. I think it’s a lot more difficult, but also much more rewarding, to try to work with artists who have never worked in this context before.
On June 5, sculptor Charles Ray unveiled two larger-than-life stainless steel figures titled adam and eve (2023), on the steps outside the Manhattan West site. Hanging in the adjacent lobby is the monumental 28-by-39-foot mosaic by painter Christopher Wool in Venetian stone and glass, visible from the street through large glass windows.
Detail of Charles Ray, adam and eve (2023) in West Manhattan. Photo by Timothy Schenck.
King, who has advised Brookfield on art for the past seven years, said he thinks Ray and Wool, stars of the contemporary art world, would be hard up for the commissions. But when he approached Ray a few years ago, the artist immediately agreed.
Ray said the pandemic has affected his approach to sculpting, as have his own injuries, including a broken neck sustained in a recent car accident.
“At the same time, I was reading Lost Books of Eden and an Adam and Eve story,” Ray told Artnet News during an unveiling celebration. “As I read and thought about it at the height of the pandemic, old people were dying and it was horrific.”
The resulting work depicts an elderly man and woman, rendered in the artist’s signature stainless steel on a larger-than-life scale. “I’m very interested in this place and the civic quality,” Ray said. “I know they have to interact with vitality. They had to be careful, but not compete with the buildings, and defend themselves.
Installation view by Christopher Wool, Crosstown Traffic News (2023). Photo by Timothy Schenck.
The wool mosaic, the aptly named Crosstown Traffic News (2023), marks the first time the artist has accepted a public commission. “It was such an exciting idea to be invited and considered,” Wool said at the event.
It is also the first time that the artist, best known for his ironic black and white text paintings and abstract canvases, has worked with this medium. “The challenge was the scale,” he said. “I had worked with screen printing, which allowed me to enlarge the images, and I immediately started thinking about different ways to inflate something. Mosaic seemed perfect.
The wool based mosaic, with its swirls of red and black lines on a dark, cloud-like abstraction in a design. “The drawing took a day and the discovery of the mosaic took a month,” he said, plus another four months to make it. (Craftsman Fabrizio Travisanutt of Spilimbergo, Italy, just north of Venice, took “what little I said and went with it.”)
The finished work is made up of 140 panels of 32 square feet, interlocking pieces that were assembled on scaffolding.
Artist Charles Ray at the unveiling of adam and eve (2023) in West Manhattan. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
Sabrina Kanner, development, design and construction manager for Brookfield Properties, said the company sees the Manhattan West site as an “ideal place” for art.
“If you look at the topography of the site, the way the level drops off as you head downtown, the level of the plaza and these public spaces have created a kind of perch where you can easily see the art while you are walking down Ninth Avenue or coming from Moynihan Station,” Kanner told Artnet News.
From L to R: Artist Christopher Wool, Sabrina Kanner and Jacob King at the unveiling of Crosstown Traffic News (2023) in West Manhattan. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
“So while we haven’t identified what the job would be yet, we were committed to having a major job there.”
“I give Brookfield so much credit,” King added. “They are willing to take risks. If youyou’re not willing to take a bit of a risk, you’re never going to end up with a really great piece of art.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay one step ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to receive breaking news, revealing interviews and incisive reviews that move the conversation forward.
