stainless steel

Whitney Biennial in Central Park
 
March 7, 2002 - June 30, 2002

The Mall in Central Park

For the first time in recent history, the Public Art Fund and the Whitney Museum of American Art co-curated a major exhibition in Central Park as part of the Whitney Museum's 2002 Biennial Exhibition. Artists Keith Edmier, Roxy Paine, Kiki Smith, Kim Sooja, and Brian Tolle were commissioned to make dynamic new work suited for specific sites within Central Park. Together, these five installations represented a broad overview of contemporary approaches to public art that were both thought-provoking and accessible to the largest possible audience.

Roxy Paine's Bluff was a fifty-foot high tree made of brilliantly reflective stainless steel. Bluff's heavy industrial plates formed a two-foot-wide trunk that supported more than 5000 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 manmade artifice rather than attempting to blend in with the surrounding real plants and trees, Bluff was a cunning reminder that Central Park is itself an artificial sanctuary, a product of city planners as much as Mother Nature.

Artist Bio
Roxy Paine was born in 1966 in New York, where he currently lives and works. He attended the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn and College of Sante Fe, New Mexico. Paine has recently had solo shows at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; Rogar Bjorkholmen Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; and Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France. Recent group exhibitions include "01.01.01: Art in Technological Times," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; "Give and Take," Serpentine Gallery, London, England; "Greater New York," P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York; and "5th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art," Lyon, France.

Sponsorship
The Whitney Biennial in Central Park, organized by the Public Art Fund, was sponsored by Bloomberg. The exhibition received additional support from City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Challenge Grant 2002, The Third Millennium Foundation, and Melissa and Robert Soros.

Location
Bluff was sited just east of the Sheep Meadow along The Mall (mid-park at 67th Street).