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For immediate release
Public Art Fund announces…
YAYOI KUSAMA * ASSUME VIVID ASTRO
FOCUS * DAVE MULLER
With a special performance by Los Super Elegantes
April 17, 11am - 5pm
The Public Art Fund, as part of its Projects in Central Park collaboration
with the Whitney Biennial presents a day of artists' projects in Central
Park featuring participatory installations and sculptural works by Yayoi
Kusama, assume vivid astro focus, and Dave Muller. These new projects
will join several that are currently on view-by Paul McCarthy, Liz Craft,
Olav Westphalen, and David Altmejd-adding a performance and viewer-participatory
dimension to the Public Art Fund's outdoor component of the 2004 Whitney
Biennial. Each of the works will open on April 17 and remain on view for
varying lengths of time.
Beginning at 11am on Saturday, April 17, Dave Muller's Three-Day Weekend,
one of a series of nomadic artist-curated exhibitions he has organized
around the world, will open to the public in Central Park's Arsenal Gallery
(where it will remain on view through Monday, April 19). From 1- 3pm,
the Skate Circle-the group that runs the seasonal weekly disco skate gatherings
mid-park near 72nd Street-will welcome assume vivid astro focus's avaf
8, featuring a special afternoon performance by the Los Angeles-based
band Los Super Elegantes. At 3pm, Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden
will go on view in the Conservatory Waters, just steps away from the Alice
in Wonderland statue where she staged a "body festival" happening
in 1968 - a fact that is especially fitting given the key roles that social
interaction and artistic collaboration play in the work of both Muller
and assume vivid astro focus.
Schedule and Details for Saturday, April 17
11am - 5pm: Three Day Weekend opens in the Arsenal Gallery
1 - 3pm: The Skate Circle welcomes avaf 8 with assume vivid
astro focus. Featuring a special performance by Los Super Elegantes. Bring
your own skates!
3pm: Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden opens
All events are free and open to the public
Three Day Weekend
A group show with works by Polly Staple, assume vivid astro focus,
Richard Hawkins,
A.A. Weinman, Anne Collier, Barbara Bestor, Anthony Burdin, and Dave Muller.
The Arsenal Gallery in the Arsenal Building, Third Floor, Fifth Avenue
and 64th Street
April 17-19, 11am - 5pm daily
Since 1994, the Los Angeles-based artist Dave Muller has been organizing
Three Day Weekends, a series of roving, intermittent group exhibitions-he
describes the ongoing project as an "artist-run, nomadic project
space." These shows remain on view for only three days and then disappear
as suddenly as they arrived, remaining after the fact as little more than
a rumor. Non-hierarchical and inclusive in nature, Muller's "Three
Day Weekends" critique art world conventions even as they participate
in them: Muller condenses the formal structure of mainstream gallery and
museum exhibitions, offering an affable, open-ended alternative that emphasizes
the social experience of viewing art. For Central Park, Muller presents
Three-Day Weekend, featuring works by seven contemporary artists
as well as a pair of bronze eagles made by early 20th-century sculptor
Adolph Alexander Weinman. The eagles, originally made for Stanford White's
Revolutionary War monument in Fort Greene Park, have been stored by the
Parks Department in the Arsenal Gallery in recent years.
assume vivid astro focus with Rama Chorpash
avaf 8, 2004
Between the Bandshell and the Sheep Meadow, just south of the 72nd Street
Transverse
(Enter park at 72nd Street from Central Park West or Fifth Avenue)
April 17 -May 4
Artist assume vivid astro focus-whose name is derived from two musical
sources, Throbbing Gristle's album Assume Power Focus and the band Ultra
Vivid Scene-works in a wide variety of media, creating wallpaper designs,
music videos, large-scale installations, t-shirt designs, and floor stickers.
When he first arrived in New York from his native Brazil, assume vivid
astro focus was struck by the vibrancy of the many activities that take
place in Central Park, particularly at the Skate Circle, a stretch of
pavement that is transformed into a dance roller rink on spring and summer
weekends. Working in collaboration with the Central Park Dance Skaters
Association, assume vivid astro focus has created avaf 8, a vibrant
floorscape for the surface of the Skate Circle which will cover large
sections of the pavement with intricate abstractions rendered in rainbow
colors and an array of geometric patterns. He has also collaborated with
industrial designer Rama Chorpash to create a colorful canopy for the
center of the Skate Circle. avaf 8 is inspired by a wide variety
of cultural and graphic sources, from medieval unicorn tapestries to the
work of American illustrator George Plank, whose elegant, fantastical
art deco imagery often appeared on Vogue magazine covers in the
1910s and 1920s.
On April 17, 1-3pm, avaf 8 opens to the general public and, especially,
to all skaters. The afternoon will feature a special performance by assume
vivid astro focus's frequent collaborators and fellow Biennial artists
Los Super Elegantes, a Los Angeles-based duo whose high-energy musical
shows combine elements of pop and rock music, cabaret, and performance
art.
Yayoi Kusama
Narcissus Garden, 2004
Enter park at 72nd Street
April 17 - May 30
Yayoi Kusama, one of the most influential and widely recognized artists
of the 1960s, will create a new work for Central Park's Conservatory Water.
Narcissus Garden, an installation of floating silver mirrored balls
in the pond, connects back to her notorious Narcissus Garden for
the 1966 Venice Biennale where the artist was censured for selling her
1,500 mirror globes under a sign that read "Your Narcissism for Sale."
Over the past three decades, Kusama has often revisited mirrored forms
in her work, exploring notions of infinity, illusion, and repetition in
discrete sculptures and room-size installations, as in the recent The
Fireflies on the Water (2002).
On view through May 30:
David Altmejd / Untitled (Swallow) and Untitled (Bluejay)
Liz Craft / The Spare
Paul McCarthy / Daddies Bighead and MJBH
Olav Westphalen / The Weight of Dead Prey
The Public Art Fund projects in Central Park, presented in collaboration
with the Whitney Museum of American Art, are sponsored by Bloomberg and
generously supported by Adam Lindemann.
David Altmejd's Untitled (Swallow) and Untitled (Bluejay),
and assume vivid astro focus's avaf 8 are all projects of the Public
Art Fund program In the Public
Realm, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts,
The New York State Council on the Arts, A State Agency, the City of New
York Department of Cultural Affairs, the Office of the Brooklyn Borough
President, The Greenwall Foundation, The Silverweed Foundation, The JPMorgan
Chase Foundation, and friends of the Public Art Fund.
This exhibition is made possible through the cooperation of the New York
City Department of Parks & Recreation.
About the Public Art Fund
The Public Art Fund is New York's leading presenter of artists' projects,
new commissions, installations and exhibitions in public spaces. With
over 25 years of experience and an international reputation, the Public
Art Fund identifies, coordinates and realizes a diversity of major projects
by both established and emerging artists throughout New York City. By
bringing artworks outside the traditional context of museums and galleries,
the Public Art Fund provides a unique platform for an unparalleled public
encounter with the art of our time.
The 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 New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
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Contact:
Public Art Fund
tel: (212) 980-4575
e-mail: press@publicartfund.org
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