Over the last year, four million people walked the High Line, the elevated park in Chelsea. Many have stopped to photograph themselves in front of the birdhouses at the halfway point, not always realizing they were posing with a sculpture by the artist Sarah Sze. All can be forgiven for thinking it a housing project for birds. A number of birds suffering the same delusion have nested within it, either because passers-by keep leaving them food or because the birds know a great piece of art when they see it.
They may have to look harder for the six new works in “Lilliput,” the High Line’s first group exhibition of outdoor sculpture. Even from a bird’s-eye view, they’re not easy to spot. As commissioned by Cecilia Alemani, the curator of the High Line’s art program, they’re miniatures designed to counter the often oppressive monumentality of traditional public artworks. Because they’re also set in unexpected places, you never know when — or if — one will turn up.
The other day, when I made tracks down the walkway to meet Alemani for a guided tour, I didn’t notice a single one. Once I knew where to look, however Nike Air Max 97 Mens, I had to wonder how I could have missed them the first time around.
Alessandro Pessoli’s “Old Singer With Blossoms,” for instance, is a metal scarecrow that stands nine feet tall amid the copse of birch trees planted on the park’s southern end. A bronze head mounted on a kind of tripod and dressed in a colorful knitted cap, it has a garland of crocheted flowers decorating its skeletal support. In its whimsical presence, Alemani pointed out, the viewer becomes the miniature. Personally, I felt like a wide-eyed city kid discovering the urban jungle’s hidden pleasures for the first time.
If Pessoli’s piece causes necks to crane, Tomoaki Suzuki’s “Carson” — a shin-high figure of a platinum-haired young man in black leather and pointy boots — comes into view only when the spectator looks down. Loitering beside the walkway at 13th Street, the diminutive painted bronze is utterly lifelike — and cute enough, Alemani reported, to cause passers-by to stop and give the little guy a hug. “Around the office,” she confessed, “we call him Ken.”
Suzuki usually works small, carving portraits of real people in wood without having to cast them in bronze to withstand the rigors of life outdoors during a yearlong show. “I think it’s nice to give space to artists outside the usual marketplace,” said Alemani, whose free program also includes live events that invite the participation of the public.
The exhibition’s Earth Day opening featured a lunchtime performance in the park’s 15th Street Chelsea Passage by Allison Knowles. It involved hundreds of willing hands in the making of a giant chopped salad. On May 24, the choreographer Simone Forti will reprise “Huddle Czech Republic Soccer Jersey,” a 1961 dance that will require more hugging as dancers clasp, break away and come back together as they move along the path.
At West 18th Street, droll thought bubbles by the Scottish artist Dave Shrigley came into view on the High Line billboard. “How are you feeling?” it says, and goes on to spell out the sort of secret insecurities that people tend not to advertise, like feeling fat, anxious and stuck in a rut. “That’s how I feel every morning!” Alemani laughed, though she is invariably so lively and cheerful that I didn’t believe it.
The billboard, donated to Friends of the High Line for use as exhibition space by a different artist every other month, is not part of “Lilliput.” The group show continues with a pair of bronze monkeys making goo-goo eyes at each other on a bench between 22nd and 23rd Streets. To get a gander at this work, by Francis Upritchard, a viewer pretty much has to be sitting beside it. They’re really small, but like every other sculpture in the show, they induce this very public experience with unexpected intimacy. (Alemani says it’s the most popular make-out spot on the whole High Line.)
The sculptor Allyson Vieira dealt with a different side of human nature, the one that trashes our streets with disposable items like used coffee cups. She tucked a tiny, cast-bronze pyramid of them into a corner at 23rd Street. Like the other sculptures in the yearlong show, its appearance will change with the seasons as it collects debris and the weather deepens or bleaches its patina.
Even more obscure, because they’re partly camouflaged by surrounding plants coach online outlet store, are abstract totems that Erika Verzutti topped with what look like a fossilized avocado and a prehistoric pineapple. Look for them on the Falcone Flyover, a raised portion of the pathway between West 25th and West 27th Streets.
That’s where “Lilliput” ends but the most invisible of Alemani’s other commissions begins. It’s a sound piece by Uri Aran, audible only when you sit on the bench between the trees and cock an ear to the expressionless voice intoning the names of animals we think of as bad or good to us. (“The elephant: good. The tapeworm: bad.”) It’s very funny.
On a much grander scale is the activity at the High Line’s current 30th Street limit, where the Hudson Yards development is under construction. When it rises from the ground, the buildings will block the expansive view west to the river and north to the Javits Center, where the roadbed ends. Thinking about it made me feel, to borrow Shrigley’s words, frustrated and depressed.
More heartening was the news that the High Line was building there too — a performance arena, among other things. And people who live or work along the parkway have been adding their own artworks to the scene. A couple of the neighborhood’s galleries have installed sculpture on their rooftops, while one resident of 27th Street created a zoo of handmade animals and cavorting children on his.
“We encourage this sort of thing,” says the Milanese-born Alemani, who also has curated public programs for Frieze New York, the art fair taking place on Randall’s Island this weekend. She’ll also be adding more artworks throughout the year. (A sleeping giant will appear on the southern roadbed on May 17th.) But Alemani’s favorite public sculptures isn’t on the High Line at all. It’s the Statue of Liberty. I could see why. Perfectly framed between the park’s plantings at 17th Street, it looks absolutely Lilliputian.
“Lilliput” is on view through April 14, 2013, all along the High Line from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street and 10th Avenue.
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