Press Release
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mixed media

MetroSpective

January 29 - November 8, 2003

City Hall Park

Public Art Fund and Forest City Ratner Companies is pleased to present an exhibition that brings contemporary art back to City Hall Park for the first time since 1992. MetroSpective celebrates ten years of Public Art Fund projects at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, revisiting six works that were first exhibited there. The retrospective at City Hall Park provides a new venue and audience for these seven artists: Art Domantay, Ken Landauer, Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Peter Rostovsky, Do-Ho Suh, and Brian Tolle.

For the lobby of City Hall, Do-Ho Suh turns the traditional monument upside down with his small-scale maquette for Public Figures. Instead of a single figure perched on a pedestal, Suh creates a pedestal supported by myriad miniature anonymous male and female figures, refocusing the viewer's attention from the individual to the collective masses. Challenging the established notion of the common citizen revering a monument to an important figure, Suh emphasizes the power of the individual within public space.

Artist Bio
Do-Ho Suh's work is informed by his personal experience of making the cultural shift from Korea to the United States, and uses familiar materials and structures to underscore the relationship between the individual and the collective. Of the public figures supporting his stone pedestal, Suh says, "[they]represent the multiple, the diverse, the anonymous mass…supporting and resisting the stone."

Sponsorship
This exhibition and the ongoing Public Art Fund program at MetroTech Center are sponsored by the MetroTech Commons Associates, an organization that consists of MetroTech companies Bear Stearns & Company, Forest City Ratner Companies, KeySpan, JPMorganChase, Polytechnic University, Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), DOITT and E-911. Special thanks to First New York Management.

This exhibition is made possible through the cooperation of the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York and City of New York / Parks & Recreation, The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor, and The Honorable Adrian Benepe, Commissioner, and William Castro, Manhattan Borough Commissioner, City of New York / Parks & Recreation.

Public Art Fund is a non-profit arts organization supported by generous gifts from individuals, foundations, and corporations, and with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs.

Location
City Hall Park is bordered by Chambers Street, Broadway, Centre Street, and Park Row.
The nearest subway stations are A, C, E to Chambers Street; 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall; N, R to City Hall; 2,3 to Park Place.