Park Avenue Sculpture Walk
The East Midtown Partnership, the Grand Central Partnership and The Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee invite you to enjoy 20 blocks of art installed in the heart of East Midtown.
The Sculpture Committee of The Fund for Park Avenue and NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks Program—in collaboration with arts organizations and artists—present a variety of temporary public sculpture exhibitions along Park Avenue each year. Currently, the work of Willie Cole, Raul Mourão, and Sophia Vari can be seen on the avenue between East 53rd Street and East 70th Street through November 5, 2023.
Willie Cole
Willie Cole's 4 large-scale chandeliers made of thousands of plastic water bottles on the medians of Park Avenue at 69th and 70th Streets. These monumental sculptures are titled 3000 Buddha Chandelier, Liberty Lantern, Soul Catcher and Dirt Devil of 2023.
The artist’s assemblages of found objects, such as irons, bicycles, water bottles, and shoes, offer a compelling commentary on gender, consumerism and African-American identity. Cycles of water, of carbon, and of energy have long been a critical concern to the artist. In the works on Park Avenue, Cole locates an intimacy between water bottles and cells; both consist of a modular unit that becomes a whole through repetition.
For more information please visit: www.alexanderandbonin.com
Raul Mourão
Standing five meters tall and built from Corten steel, Raul Mourão’s CAGE HEAD of 2023 proposes a thoughtful intervention in the urban environment. The sculpture’s mass, making use of gravity as a physical force, invites the audience to reflect on movement and fixity, weight and lightness; the delicate balance that binds society together and the potential repercussions when pressure is exerted upon it.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1967, Mourão is part of a generation of artists that defined Rio’s cultural scene in the 1990s. Working across various media, including installation, sculpture, photography, video, drawing, and performance, Mourão’s visual vocabulary proposes displacements and redefinitions of familiar symbols and forms in contemporary society to encourage reflections on space, urbanism, and social mores. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: Empty Head at Nara Roesler (2021) in New York, USA; Fora/Dentro at Museu da República (2018) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Você está aqui at Museu Brasileiro de Ecologia e Escultura (MuBE) (2016) in São Paulo, Brazil; and Please Touch at Bronx Museum (2015) in New York City.
CAGE HEAD is commissioned by Art at Americas Society, which is the longest-running space in the United States dedicated to exhibiting and promoting art from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada.
For more information please visit: www.nararoesler.art
Sophia Vari
Born in Athens, Greece, Sophia Vari is an established international visual artist known for polychrome sculptures, paintings, collage and watercolors. Her exploration into form and balance has evolved into several stages. Vari has pushed into the realm of dimensional space, as her nuanced geometric forms probe the relationship between the construction of physical space and the history of art. Her work is informed by Cubism, Olmec artifacts, and ancient Greek sculptures.
Created between 1993 and 2011, the works in Sophia Vari on Park Avenue are a permutation of shapes with a sense of lightness and suspension, yet resolving space and structure with an imposing bearing. They have been exhibited in Paris, Rome, Montecarlo, Beijing, Pietrasanta, Madrid, Athens, Cartagena, Baden-Baden, Geneva, and recently in London, they will now captivate the New York public.
For more information please visit: www.nohrahaimegallery.com
