Changing Places

Take a double take as the Public Art Fund presents Changing Places, an exhibition of surprising new work by Brooklyn artists Ken Landauer, Jackie Chang, Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, and John Monti. Seven new projects from these talented artists transform MetroTech Center into a surreal magic act of childhood memories, double-take awnings, and bottomless buckets.

Start with a seat at Picnic Tables, Ken Landauer’s marvelous escape to the senses of childhood. Landauer’s precision-designed picnic tables thrust adult viewers back to age two. Landauer (New York City, NY) underscores this childhood vacation by resting an oversized ladder on the lobby wall of One MetroTech Center.

And sneaking up behind you is John Monti’s (Portland, OR) flawlessly executed Four Bends and a Push Up. Bending and spilling around the trees of MetroTech Commons, it’s as if a large slab of roadway has mysteriously begun to creep up and away from its resting place.

On the outside wall of Polytechnic University’s Rogers Hall sits Serving Brooklyn Inc., Jackie Chang’s project for In the Public Realm, a Public Art Fund program for New York-based emerging artists. Taking her cue from the efforts of thousands of recently immigrated small-business owners, Chang (b.1964, Taiwan) created four business awnings that graphically depict the clash of commerce and culture, providing a humorous, refreshing, and totally unexpected reminder of the wonderful melting pot of American business practice.

The double takes continue with projects by artist team Walter Martin (b.1953, Norfolk, VA) and Paloma Muñoz (b.1965, Madrid, Spain). Five trees are “tapped” in 9 to 5 to reveal a surprising bounty: pears of bronze that drip from brass faucets into aluminum buckets. And what appears to be a field of half-buried containers is, on closer look, Bottomless Buckets, magnificently stretching as far as the eye can see. In the alcove of One MetroTech Center…well, you’d better just go see for yourself.

Sculptures in the Lobby of One MetroTech Center:
Mechanical Operation of the Spirit by Walter Martin
Ladder by Ken Landauer

Sculptures in the Commons
Serving Brooklyn Inc. by Jackie Chang
Picnic Tables by Ken Landauer
Four Bends and a Push-Up by John Monti
Bottomless Buckets by Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz
Nine to Give by Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz

Ken Landauer, Jackie Chang, Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, and John Monti