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Public Art Fund
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OUT OF STOCK Now Entering Brooklyn This small catalogue documents four Public Art Fund projects that took place in the borough of Brooklyn, ranging from Vik Muniz's wrapping of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's façade to the pop-surrealist sculptures of the American Idyll group exhibition at MetroTech, the sandwich board works curator Jacob Fabricius carried through downtown Brooklyn, and the haunting mechanized puppets of a Clara Williams installation. Vik Muniz's gigantic gingerbread house, a photographic blow-up of an actual gingerbread cake, complete with frosting windows, jellybean arches, m&m frieze, and gummy bear cornices reproduced BAM's beaux arts architectural minutiae in detail. CandyBAM, as Muniz called it, concealed the building’s exterior during restoration work, and—at 300 feet long by 60 feet tall—represented an ambitious addition to his photographic series that used food or other unusual substances to depict a familiar object or scene. In American Idyll, artists Jon Conner, Amy Gartrell, Dave McKenzie, Pentti Monkkonen and Roman de Salvo created works that playfully commented upon outdoor recreation, roadside Americana, and idyllic pastimes. Although the works displayed a sense of nostalgia and celebrated the quirkier aspects of American culture, they also demonstrated a wariness of superficial pleasures, investigating fantasy, desire, work and leisure in contemporary society. In Sandwiched (in New York), curator Jacob Fabricius organized and exhibited an unusual outdoor group show in downtown Brooklyn. Combining conceptual art strategies and urban advertising techniques, Fabricius became a one-man roving exhibition, wearing sandwich-board artwork made by one of the ten artists in the show. Clara Williams's The Price (Giving in Gets You Nowhere) was a mechanized marionette production that took place in the third-story windows of a Brooklyn brownstone. Coming to life once an hour, like a cuckoo clock, it enacted an 8-minute sequence loosely drawn from Arthur Miller’s 1968 play, The Price. Williams's installation conveyed Miller’s basic narrative with three life-size wooden marionettes, each gliding out of a window, using gestures and small props in a manner at once minimal and melodramatic. The book contains an essay by Jacob Fabricius, along with conversations with Bernadette Corporation, Leon Golub, Sharon Hayes, Ben Kinmont, John Miller, Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Piper, Julia Scher, Michael Snow, and Valerie Tevere. CONTEMPORARY ART 2003, 7.5 x 10 inches, 48 pp, color illus. Softcover, no ISBN code: paf bklyn G-3

OUT OF STOCK Allison Smith: The Muster This full-color book documents artist Allison Smith’s The Muster, a work commissioned by the Public Art Fund. In May 2005 Smith transformed Governors Island—the former U.S. military base located only minutes by ferry from the southern shore of Manhattan—into a stage for The Muster, a one-day encampment of more than 50 campsites and art installations. These campsite-installations were created by both artists and non-artists in response to the question: "What are you fighting for?" As a military term, “muster” refers to a gathering of troops for the purposes of inspection, critique, exercise, and display. Smith’s work adopted the language and aesthetic of a Civil War reenactment (while not re-enacting a specific war from the past), encouraging participants to articulate diverse causes and identities through performance. The causes taken up by participants ranged from the political to the whimsical, and referenced art history, technology, gender, democracy, and sociology. Beyond its military roots, The Muster also bore a resemblance to a country fair or carnival, blending art, craft, culture, history, and social activism through mock battles, magic shows, quilting bees and soapbox speeches. In addition to color images, the book contains text by Allison Smith and essays by Tom Eccles, James Trainor, and Anne Wehr. CONTEMPORARY ART 2007, 5 x 6.5 inches, 128 pp, color illus. Softcover, ISBN 0-9608488-4-3 code: paf smi I-2

OUT OF STOCK Francis Alÿs: The Modern Procession The artistic practice of the Belgium-born Francis Alÿs falls into many genres—drawing, painting, video, film, and photography—but the starting point for each finished work is always performative action. The Modern Procession, organized by Alÿs and presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, was modeled after a traditional ritual procession. Beginning in front of MoMA, the procession paraded through midtown Manhattan, crossed the Queensboro Bridge into Long Island City, marched along Queens Boulevard, and ended at the door of MoMA QNS—the museum’s temporary home during the construction of its new building. At once festive and ceremonial, the procession made the museum's historic transition both visible and public, linking the two boroughs in a spectacular way. A 12-member Peruvian brass band set the pace for the procession, while over 150 uniformed participants held banners, scattered rose petals and carried reproductions of MoMA's most famous works—by artists Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Alberto Giacometti—on hand-held wooden carriages. These reproductions paid homage to the history of MoMA while celebrating the new cultural and economic potential of bringing art into the streets. Artist Kiki Smith, herself carried on a carriage above the crowd, served as a representative—and living icon—of contemporary art. This publication includes essays by Alÿs, Tom Eccles, and RoseLee Goldberg, among others, the transcript of a conversation with Alÿs, and a DVD containing footage of the procession. CONTEMPORARY ART 2004, 8.5 x 10.5 inches, 160 pp, color illus. Hardcover, ISBN 0-9608488-2-7 code: paf mod G-5

OUT OF STOCK Plop: Recent Projects of the Public Art Fund This full-color catalogue documents 49 contemporary art projects presented by the Public Art Fund from 1995 to 2003, exploring the diverse ways artists have created dynamic participatory art experiences for New York City's urban landscape. Curator Tom Eccles contributes an informative essay addressing the inherent difficulties in presenting works of public art, as well as the joys of forging relationships between communities and artists, and watching the public encounter contemporary art outside the familiar context of a museum or gallery. Color images and a description of each artist’s project are placed alongside images of previous works, biographical information, and a list of suggested further reading—providing a detailed sense of how their public project fits into their larger body of work. The 49 artists include: Vito Acconci, Louise Bourgeois, Dan Graham, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Vik Muniz, Nam June Paik, Paul Pfeiffer, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread. In addition to Eccles, Dan Cameron and Katy Siegel also contribute catalogue essays. CONTEMPORARY ART 2004, 10 x 11 inches, 256 pp, color illus. Hardcover, ISBN 1-85894248-9 code: paf plop G-5

OUT OF STOCK Governors Island: Photographs by Lisa Kereszi and Andrew Moore This exhibition catalogue features photographs taken by Lisa Kereszi and Andrew Moore of Governors Island, the former national military post located in New York Harbor. Kereszi and Moore, both New York-based artists, photographed Governors Island’s indoor and outdoor spaces—which appeared virtually frozen in time—over the course of many months. Their expanded portrait reveals the island’s architecture, landscape, and hidden places, including photographs of the historic 18th- and 19th-century military structures, along with images of the commissary, houses of worship, bowling alley, hospital, Burger King restaurant, grade school, and other areas that were, until recently, hubs of daily life. Like all of her work, Kereszi's photographs are straightforward and unaltered, portraying scenarios just as she finds them. Drawn to the margins and details of everyday spaces, her haunting images capture traces the island’s inhabitants left behind—notes on a chalkboard, a detail of a wall or a window. By contrast, Moore's photographs—made with a large format camera—allow viewers to experience the grand scale of the island’s architecture and landscapes, often including a view of the Manhattan skyline in the distance. PHOTOGRAPHY 2004, 9.5 x 11.5 inches, 60 pp, color illus. Softcover, ISBN 0-9608488-3-5 code: paf gov G-3

OUT OF STOCK Semiprecious This small catalogue documents a 2005 group exhibition of sculpture at Public Art Fund’s MetroTech Center in Brooklyn. Artists Carolyn Castaño, Jennifer Cohen, Luis Gispert, Kirsten Hassenfeld, and Marc Swanson use visually dazzling materials (including rhinestones, sequins, and other precious metals) to explore themes of artifice, seduction, exoticism, and fantasy—Castaño, for example, presents a bejeweled fiberglass peacock (an iconic figure in the history of art and jewelry design), while Gispert forms three boom-boxes into a cast-bronze bench (overlaying an homage to early hip-hop culture with a nod to minimalist sculpture). As curator Miki Garcia writes in the catalogue, the five artists counter notions of beauty and the sublime with “implications of excessiveness and decadence,” employing “precious objects and their hypnotic qualities in an effort to transcend the glitter, taking the viewer beyond ordinary experience to consider new horizons of meaning.” CONTEMPORARY ART/SCULPTURE 2004, 5 x 9 inches, 30 pp, color illus. Softcover, no ISBN code: paf semi G-5

OUT OF STOCK Roxy Paine/Bluff This publication documents Roxy Paine's Bluff, a 50-foot-tall sculptural tree displayed in New York’s Central Park as part of a collaboration between Public Art Fund and the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2002 Biennial Exhibition. Made of brilliantly reflective stainless steel, Bluff's heavy industrial plates formed a two-foot-wide trunk supporting more than 5,000 pounds of cantilevered branches, welded together from 24 different diameters of steel pipes and rods. Its gleaming frame remained unchanged as its environment shifted from winter into spring. By announcing its grand man-made artifice rather than attempting to blend in with the surrounding plants and trees, Bluff was a cunning reminder that Central Park is itself an artificial sanctuary, a product of city planners as much as nature. The catalogue includes extensive color photographs of the work’s creation and multiple views of its final installation. These images are supported by a transcription of a conversation between Paine and Allan McCollum, and essays by Michael Crewdson, Margaret Mittelbach and Tim Griffin, which discuss Bluff in relation to Central Park’s history and landscape design, and in relation to Paine’s larger body of work. CONTEMPORARY ART/SCULPTURE 2004, 7.5 x 10.5 inches, 112 pp, color illus. Hardcover, ISBN 0-9608488-1-9 code: paf roxy G-3

OUT OF STOCK Mark Dion's Field Guide to the Wildlife of Madison Square Park Working closely with scientists and non-art institutions, Mark Dion mines the fields of ecology, botany, ethnography, and natural history museum displays in realizing his installations and sculptures. His long-standing interest in environmental issues led him to create Urban Wildlife Observation Unit, a constructed urban ecological center that allowed park visitors to reexamine their surroundings by taking a closer look at the natural environment—the animals, bugs and trees—in Madison Square Park. Fashioned after a 19th-century wildlife refuge viewing area, Dion adorned his field station with objects, drawings, and other props that pertain to the park's natural surroundings. Created with input from park rangers and New York-area naturalists, Dion's interactive sculptural area allowed for a unique and educational engagement with Madison Square Park. Edited by the artist, the book contains essays by Michael Crewdson, Margaret Mittelbach, and Gregory Volk. CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2003, 4 x 5.5 inches, 32 pp, b&w illus. Softcover, no ISBN code: paf dion G-5

OUT OF STOCK Keith Edmier: Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944 This book documents a Keith Edmier sculptural installation, which was presented by the Public Art Fund in conjunction with the 2002 Whitney Biennial in Central Park. Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944 appeared as a seemingly conventional war memorial to Edmier’s grandfathers who both served in the Second World War. Playing upon the traditional figurative statuary located throughout Central Park, the work was comprised of two bronze figures, each standing atop a granite base engraved with an epitaph. These uncanny figures were depicted in formal military attire, historically accurate to what they would have worn in 1944, the year Edmier's paternal grandfather, Emil Dobbelstein, committed suicide while on active duty at a military base in Missouri. Henry J. Drope, his mother's father, died in 1995 at the age of seventy-nine. By acknowledging his grandfathers' unique roles in World War II's massive history, Edmier's personal narrative complicates the notion of public statuary, resulting in a tender memorial. Color photographs of the installation, as well as WWII-era ephemera Edmier collected during the work’s development (telegrams, newspaper articles, military badges), are presented alongside an essay by critic Ronald Jones and an afterword by the artist. CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2002, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 40 pp, color illus. Softcover, ISBN 096084880-0 code: paf 1944 G-5

OUT OF STOCK Josiah McElheny: The Metal Party New York-based Josiah McElheny's The Metal Party was a re-creation of a party organized in 1929 by students of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. Taking the original ‘party’ as a point of departure, McElheny produced a hyper-reflective environment of metallic surfaces complete with mirrored and clear glass spheres that alternated on the ceiling above an aluminum floor. Upon entry to The Metal Party, each viewer was encouraged to see themselves as part of the installation, and was invited to put on a silver Mylar costume specially designed by McElheny. Viewers were also encouraged to document their experience with a Polaroid self-portrait; many of these Polaroids were also incorporated into the installation. A sound composition produced by electronic media artists Beth Coleman and Howard Goldkrand of Soundlab Cultural Alchemy, filled The Metal Party with an infusion of period jazz music, Bauhaus-inspired experimental instrumentation and contemporary dance rhythms. The book contains essays by Glen Helfand, Christine Mehring, Peter Nisbet, and Ingrid Schaffner CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2002, 8 x 8 inches, 70 pp, b&w illus. Softcover, no ISBN code: paf metal G-5

OUT OF STOCK Tony Oursler: The Influence Machine Tony Oursler (born in New York in 1957), a pioneer of new media art, often combines spoken text with moving images and sculptural objects, liberating video from the constraints of the box and confronting the viewer with fragmented narratives that convey alienation and psychological disorders. The Influence Machine, installed first at Madison Square Park in New York and later at Soho Square in London, captured voices and images of ghosts, both contemporary and historical, creating a séance experience that recalled 19th-century sound and light projections. Oursler experimented with video, smoke machines, a variety of soundtracks, and several sculptural elements to explore the impact technologies have on our daily lives (both now and historically). The Influence Machine was comprised of projections of large faces onto smoke and trees with corresponding narratives--poetic texts written by Oursler and other voices from the history of early technology. Images of knocking hands were also projected onto trees and surrounding buildings with corresponding knocking sounds that alluded to Morse code and other early forms of communication. Texts ran over construction fencing and trees pronouncing intimate and encoded messages. In addition to Oursler's abstract narratives (which are reprinted in the book), the soundtrack for The Influence Machine included segments of radio feedback, the unusual sound of a glass harmonica performed by Dean Shostak, and a score by experimental filmmaker and composer Tony Conrad that was commissioned for the project. Color photographs of the piece are presented alongside a conversation between Tony Oursler and Louise Neri, and essays by Carlo McCormick and Marina Warner. CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2001, 8.5 x 10.5 inches, 104 pp, color illus. Harcover, ISBN 1-902-20111-6 code: paf infl I-1

OUT OF STOCK Mariko Mori: Wave UFO This book documents Mariko Mori’s WAVE UFO, a sculptural object and participatory installation that fused real-time computer graphics, brainwave technology, sound, and state-of-the-art architectural engineering to create a dynamic interactive experience. Drawing upon the Buddhist principle that all forms of life in the universe are interconnected, Wave UFO seamlessly combined the viewer’s physical experience with Mori's singular vision of a cosmic dream world. Mori achieved this connection between technology and spirituality through the use of specially designed computer programs and scientific equipment that monitored and visually interpreted participants' brainwaves. Within the tranquil interior of the work, Mori sent participants, three at a time, on an aesthetic voyage that sought to connect these individuals to each other and to the world at large, epitomizing the artist’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between the individual and an interconnected cosmos. In addition to color photographs of the installation, this volume contains sketches and diagrams that chart the work’s development. CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2003, 9 x 11 inches, 174 pp, color illus. Softcover with plastic case, ISBN 3-88375-721-7 code: paf ufo F-7

OUT OF STOCK Lawrence Weiner: NYC Manhole Covers Lawrence Weiner is an internationally renowned artist who has been creating significant artworks for the last 40 years. His public projects—often texts appearing as part of the urban landscape—have defied many of the preconceptions of “public art" and monumentality. Major museum exhibitions of his work since the 1960s have been presented at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. In 1999 the Public Art Fund invited Weiner, a lifelong New Yorker, to create a permanent artwork for the city’s public spaces. This small catalogue documents the 19 locations where the resulting NYC Manhole Covers—which read “in direct line with another and the next”, referring to the city’s grid of streets—are installed. Simple, utilitarian and quintessentially New York, Weiner’s manhole covers are a ubiquitous yet unassuming participant in the streetscape. CONTEMPORARY ART/INSTALLATION 2001, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 40 pp, b&w illus. Softcover, no ISBN code: paf nyc G-5

 

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