Paola Pivi How I Roll

According to a famous anecdote, three pioneers of modern art—Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Leger—are said to have visited the 1912 Paris Air Show. Observing a propeller, Brancusi said, “Now that is what I call sculpture!” A hundred years later, Paola Pivi’s How I Roll suggests that the Modernist romance with industrial design lives on.

Pivi’s sculpture incorporates an entire six-seat plane that has been specially modified, enabling it to rotate through 360 degrees while held aloft on its wing tips. The artist’s transformation allows this Piper Seneca to be seen in an entirely new way. Airborne but flightless, its steady circular movement is mesmerizing. The shift of context from airport runway to New York City plaza is equally dramatic. It creates the striking and surreal experience of a familiar object seen in an unexpected place doing a very unfamiliar thing. Like a child’s dream come to life, How I Roll is typical of the artist’s bold and playful imagination.

Paola Pivi: How I Roll is curated by Nicholas Baume.