Marking the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s 38th commissioned exhibition, New York-based artist Leonard Drew is creating a monumental new public art project for the Park entitled City in the Grass. The installation will present a topographical view of an abstract cityscape atop a patterned panorama.
This sprawling work of varied materials will extend over 100-feet long across the lawn, and at various points crescendo into rising towers. These sculptures will grow in and around a patterned surface made of colored sand that mimics Persian carpet designs and reflects the artist’s interest in East Asian decorative traditions and global design more broadly. Bringing together domestic and urban motifs, City in the Grass will invite the Park’s visitors to walk on its surface and to explore the abstract terrain of the work from all angles.
“In this teeming urban space, Leonardo Drew’s goal has been to bring people close in to his work, to study the swells and folds of his cityscape, and to locate a personal place within the purposeful voids in the work,” said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, exhibition curator and Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy. “This is a symbolic and literal multilayered project. The artist builds layer on layer of materials while using the metaphor of a torn carpet as a complicated reference to home, comfort, and sanctuary. Viewers can look onto City in the Grass as if they are giants assessing a terrain; upon sitting along the Oval Lawn’s green expanse, they will be able to embed themselves within the fabric of the sculpture.”
Added the Conservancy’s Executive Director Keats Myer, “We look forward to welcoming Leonardo Drew’s City in the Grass to our Oval Lawn. Through this monumental, interactive, and visually dynamic work, Drew will encourage visitors to consider and celebrate their relationships to the cities they inhabit and explore, and the agency that each individual possesses in their making.”
Leonardo Dres: City in the Grass is organized by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator of Mad. Sq. Art; Tom Reidy, Senior Project Manager; Julia Friedman, Senior Curatorial Manager; and Tessa Ferreyros, Curatorial Manager.
Signs, like the one below, tell you ~ What’s Happening Here? and as you can see, Madison Square Park has a new resident. It’s a juvenile red tailed hawk. A very nice resident for a Park to have.
We couldn’t leave without checking on at least one of the five beehives that have made Madison Square Park their home (below).
Leonardo Drew: City in the Grass will be on view from June 3rd through December 15, 2019 at Madison Square Park.