The Fund for Park Avenue commissioned Brooklyn-based artist, Joseph La Piana, to create six sculptures to grace the Park Avenue Mall from 53rd Street to 70th Street.
The Series, entitled Tension Sculptures, are made of durable synthetic canary yellow polyurethane, silicon and rebar, stretched between stainless steel armatures, creating pleats and folds with different shapes and forms from many sides. The large-scale structures can be seen blocks away on Park Avenue, with the tallest at sixteen-feet high, and the widest twenty-two-feet long.
The Park Avenue Mall is known for its plethora of colorful tulips in April, which should make for a pleasingly Spring-like base for the installations.
We noticed that the concept, Tension, originated in La Piana’s 2015 art exhibition, where 11,000 feet of yellow latex was stretched back and forth across several concrete pillars in a 20,000+ square-foot industrial warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In this installation, entitled simply Tension, the artist drew a parallel between “the psychological and emotional boundaries of humankind, testing one’s infinite capacity, “and included an audio component.
A second series, entitled Tension Between, was a solo exhibition by the artist at Sara Kay Gallery New York in 2018 ~ and included not only the latex bands, but also works on paper from the artist’s Tension series, including various relief drawings on watercolor paper, vellum and chipboard.
We captured five of the six Tension Sculptures already installed, and will go back to capture the sixth later this week.
Joseph La Piana: Tension will be on view from March through July, 2019 on the Park Avenue Mall from 53rd Street to 70th Street. This installation is presented by The Fund for Park Avenue and NYC Parks and Recreation.