“LANDMARK” Exhibition

“LANDMARK” Exhibition

Socrates Sculpture Park

This event has ended.

Socrates Sculpture Park will usher in its 30th anniversary year with LANDMARK, a summer-long series of eight artist commissions that both physically and symbolically mark the land. Once an industrial landfill and illegal dumping ground, the institution has transformed itself into New York City’s preeminent sculpture park and social space for public art, community engagement and urban discovery. Since its inception in 1986, Socrates Sculpture Park and the surrounding area of Long Island City, Queens has been subject to unprecedented social and ecological change. From Hank Willis Thomas’ billboard overlooking the entrance to a colossal earthwork by Meg Webster engaging directly with the land, each project probes the history of the park, while envisioning its future.

Anchored by a newly commissioned earthwork by Meg Webster, LANDMARK is comprised of eight works by Abigail DeVille, Brendan Fernandes, Cary Leibowitz, Jessica Segall, Casey Tang, Hank Willis Thomas, and the curatorial collective ARTPORT_making waves.

At 70-feet in diameter, Concave Room for Bees, a new earthwork by Meg Webster is a living sculptural installation that will evolve over time. Heavily influenced by the Land Art movement, Webster uses the earth as her canvas, incorporating natural materials such as dirt, rocks and flowers to physically transform the land itself. Part of what makes Webster’s artistic practice so distinct is she encourages visitors to engage with the ecosystem that she has created, relying on senses of sight, smell, touch and hearing. The circular earth bowl, comprising more than 400 cubic yards of fertile soil reaching six-feet high, is planted with flowers, herbs, and shrubs that attract pollinating creatures. After the exhibition, the soil will be dispersed across the landscape, addressing the park’s urgent need for nutrient rich topsoil.

In addition to Concave Room for Bees by Meg Webster, LANDMARK projects directly address the intricate interaction between human and environmental forces:

Half Moon by Abigail DeVille utilizes found materials to address issues of migration, loss, and the haunting effect of history. Deville envisions the wreckage of Dutch sailor Henry Hudson’s ship, while borrowing from the architectural creations of the Native American Lenni Lenape people, who met the Half Moon as it arrived on the shores of Manhattan.

Jessica Segall’s Fugue in♭consists of a colony of honey bees transplanted into the shell of a salvaged piano. Transformed by habitat adaption, bees unintentionally author an orchestral sound installation by interacting with the strings of the piano harp. Fittingly, the sculpture becomes an homage to Gilded Age Astoria, once a major industrial port and hub of piano manufacturing.

Casey Tang’s Urban Forest Lab has evolved into a self-sustaining entity through sustained nourishment and successive plantings of different flora. The forest garden will become a living repository of perennial vegetables, where visitors can explore various concepts of sustainability, as well as human relationships with nature, ecology, agriculture, and food.

ARTPORT_making waves will present an anthology of the video series Cool Stories for When The Planet Gets Hot. Housed in a reclaimed shipping container, the series draws on the organization’s estimable work telling stories about climate change, linking the park’s local plot of land to a global dialogue surrounding stewardship and sustainability.

Elevated at the main entrance of the park is Hank Willis Thomas’ From Cain’t See in the Mornin’ Till Cain’t See at Night (from Strange Fruit), part of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Broadway Billboard series. Thomas’ striking billboard confronts the viewer head on as the first image the visitor sees upon entering the park, stimulating a dialogue on the relationship between land, labor, American history, and race.

As part of LANDMARK, artists have also contributed subtle gestures or interventions that address the park’s social role within the community. Marked Space is customized caution tape by Brendan Fernandes that confounds an administrative mechanism, provoking questions about the language of authority and assumptions about borders and boundaries. In Honk If U Love Socrates Sculpture Park, Cary Leibowitz emblazons the park’s Bobcat loader with playful bumper stickers that undercut the seriousness of this prototypical emblem of masculinity.

Highlighting Socrates as both a social space and place for making, Open Seating is a series of open design chairs created by Jonathan Odom and painted by volunteers, staff and youth participants in the park’s education programs.

LANDMARK is made possible with major support from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. Substantial support is provided by Charina Endowment Fund, Mark di Suvero, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, Ivana Mestrovic, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Smith, Plant Specialists, and Spacetime C.C.

Media

• Sculpture
• Installation

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