Press Release
Artist Bio
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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.

Witch Catcher is a large-scale brick chimney, twisting 25 feet into the air, surrounded by the foundation of a depicted 17th century New England house. Witch Catcher suggests the archeological layering that occurs with urban development and, perhaps, serves as a reminder of how forgetful we can be. Witch Catcher combines fact, fiction and physical presence to invoke collective memory and spark curiosity for history's neglected corners.

Artist Bio
Brian Tolle's work reflects his fascination with American history and the seamless ribbon that is America's timeline. He is particularly interested in the "gray areas" between past and present. Witch Catcher serves in many ways as a prequel to his more recent and ambitious work on the Irish Hunger Memorial (2002), located just blocks away along the Battery Park City esplanade. The memorial simulates a rural Irish landscape by means of a sloping grassy expanse and an abandoned cottage, and is located at Vesey Street in Battery Park City.

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.