Art Hag

Back in June the Public Art Fund unveiled Statuesque downtown at City Hall Park. The outdoor, group, sculpture exhibition features ten works by six international aritsts: Poland-based Pawel Althamer; Pakistan-born/U.S.-based Huma Bhabha; Americans Aaron Curry and Matthew Monahan; and Brits Thomas Houseago and Rebecca Warren. As the exhibit's press release states, the artists featured in Statuesque aim to "reinvent figurative sculpture for a new era."

The Public Art Fund's Director Nicholas Baume notes that this is the New York debut of each of the works on view and states, "Long considered marginal in the contemporary art world, figurative sculpture has returned to center stage in the recent works of an international group of artists born in the 1960s and 1970s... By turns visually playful, formally experimental, and viscerally charged, their works reinvent and extend the language of figurative sculpture for the twenty-first century."

The diverse and unique styles of the sculptures range from — three, neon-colored, aluminum shapes by Curry; three imposing, hulking male figures by Houseago; proud, ancient-looking men from Bhabha and Monahan; a nude woman sprawled across the grass by Althamer; and a cartoonish, bronze character by Warren. "They tend towards abstraction over realism, assemblage over the readymade, construction of form over casting from life, and physicality and texture over refinement of finish." Situated on busy walkways or lawns trafficked mainly by squirrels, the placement of the sculptures encourages "public access and interaction" and invites "visitors to experience [the] works more directly." Learn more at publicartfund.org. Through December 3rd.

Rebecca Warren, Large Concretised Monument to the Twentieth Century, 2007