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Oscar Tuazon at Brooklyn Bridge Park

By Peggy Roalf   Thursday August 16, 2012

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Last week’s art by cycle escape took me to Brooklyn Bridge Park on a day so hot that eggs were dropping from their hens hard-boiled. But an ocean breeze sweeping across New York harbor, with its view of Lady Liberty set off by a humid smoggy sky, was as refreshing as the home-made ice cream at the Blue Marble cart on Fulton Landing.

Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle, WA), whose work was most recently seen here in the 2012 Whitney Biennale, was commissioned by the Public Art Fund to create the first site-specific sculpture made for the city’s newest landscape. People, as it is titled, consists of three sculptures each of whose central feature is a monumental tree native to the borough.

Tuazon’s art typically combines industrial and natural materials to transform the experience of a building or space. In an interview with Public Art Fund curator Andria Hickey, he said, “One of the things I was thinking about, of course, was creating spaces for people. So to me, the works each have an improvisatory character—not in how they were made but in that they will be ‘completed’ by other people and experienced in lots of different ways. And the utilitarian aspect of the works is really interesting to me. It’s a way for the works to shift in and out of visibility. I like the idea that from a distance you might see them as sculptures, but if you’re sitting down on the structure or playing basketball on it, that isn’t relevant anymore.”

Installed along Pier 1 and 2, each work is informed by its everyday use: a tree becomes a fountain; a concrete handball wall is held straight by a tree trunk that also accommodates a basketball hoop; a cement cube breached by a tree frames the surrounding landscape creating a playful dialogue with built and natural forms against the Manhattan skyline.

The placement of the three pieces ensures that visitors will see the newest addition to Brooklyn Bridge Park in its entirety, including a wine café nestled in a forested glade. On returning to Fulton Landing, my reward for braving New York’s most recent heat wave was a cooling ride on the East River Ferry back to Manhattan, where the new pier at 34th Street has just opened. Information/DirectionsPhotos: Jason Wyche for the Public Art Fund.


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