Ivan Stojakovic “Battery Park”

The West 10th Street Window

poster for Ivan Stojakovic “Battery Park”
[mage: Ivan Stojakovic "Battery Park" (2015) (detail) Courtesy the artist.]

This event has ended.

Battery Park is the latest work in Stojakovic’s Urban Wild series, an ongoing hybrid project that merges
vertical gardens, painting, and sculpture. The work is an imagined and abstracted map of a future Lower
Manhattan that has been modified by radical environmental change and human attempts to respond to
those changes. The title, Battery Park, references both the park of the same name, once an artillery
battery to protect early settlements, and the architectural renderings for ‘Super Storm Barriers’ featuring
dense new plant life that came in the wake of Super Storm Sandy. These ambitious and forward-looking
renderings typically incorporate a natural plant barrier around Lower Manhattan to serve as a defense
system against further environmental incursion. In this work, Stojakovic looks to the cyclical nature of this
phenomenon: development destroyed the original natural barriers that protected our shores from flooding
and now we must artificially rebuild them. Rather than stand in critical opposition to the city, developers,
or utopian landscape architects, the artist draws attention to the fragility of our position; his succulents will
thrive in the arid West 10th Window, but they would succumb quickly in a flooded landscape.

Originally from Belgrade, Serbia, Stojakovic has lived and studied art in Belgrade (University of Belgrade,
Faculty of Fine Arts), Toronto (BFA, Ontario College of Art and Design) and New York City (MFA, Pratt
Institute), where he is currently based. His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Urban Wild’ at Honey Ramka
Gallery in Bushwick; ‘Garden X’ at the Consulate General of the Republic of Serbia in Manhattan; and
‘Global Nature’ at Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia. His most recent group shows include the TD
Bank sponsored ‘Art for Trees’ at the Grand Central Station and NY Highline. Stojakovic was recently an
artist in resident at the Winter Workspace Program at Wave Hill, Bronx.

Media

Schedule

from April 10, 2015 to May 23, 2015

Artist(s)

Ivan Stojakovic

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