ChromaTweet

I took a girlfriend to Dumbo last weekend. It was her first time off Manhattan! There is always something interesting happening on the street over there. This installation was a remnant of the recent DUMBO Arts Festival. Alexsander Macasev has brought into the public sphere two years of his "chromatweets," swatches of color he picks at the end of each day to best represent his moods and feelings on that day then posted onto his nano blog. The title of each post is the hexadecimal code of each color. No words, no explanation, just a block of color. This daily visual representation compresses everything into one piece of information: color. You can see the blog here. 

The project is currently 400 feet long and hugs a beautiful historic building. It looks like a glorious pms swatch sheet, as you see each daily "entry" next to each other and follow how the artist's mood changes over the days and months. His only rules? No black (000000) or white (FFFFFF)!

Politics & Art

"Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, 

just a barbaric one."

- Ai Weiwei

A silent but defiant protest has appeared in front of my work building. It is the work of dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. He was supposed to come here a month ago to open his installation, alongside Mayor Bloomberg. Unfortunately he was and still is regrettably indisposed at the hands of the Chinese government, being held in a place no-one knows where.

"Circle of Animals" is a series of 12 animal heads making up the Chinese Zodiac. They are each cast in bronze and stand majestically, as if on guard of the fountain they reside by. When Bloomberg unveiled the installation, he spoke of New York as a city "that fiercely defends the right of all people to express themselves," and referred to Mr Ai as "one of the most talented, respected and masterful artists of our time."

It seems the world agrees. Although Mr Ai is nowhere to be seen, his voice is heard around the globe as his art continues to be installed. When some new work of his opened in a Berlin gallery recently, it was accompanied by a huge banner by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija asking, "Where is Ai Weiwei?" Another exhibition is currently on at Lisson Gallery in London. 

The crazy thing about all this is that most people outside the art world - myself included - wouldn't have even known who Ai Weiwei is before he was detained. Now, in trying to silence him, the Chinese authorities have only succeeded in making his voice louder and more easily heard.

images: (2) art observed, rest: mine

Petal Pusher

Although we are still in the depths of winter, spring has sprung along Park Avenue. Artist Will Ryman has "planted" 38 of his rose sculptures along the centre of the avenue. Made of fiberglass, they are huge - up to 25 feet in height - and come resplendent with lady birds, ants and fallen petals. The jury is still out for me. But hey. Any color is good color in winter, right?

images: (1) new york times, (rest) mine

Play Me, I'm Yours

A really cool street installation has just finished up here in NY. It was called "Play Me, I'm Yours" by British artist, Luke Jerram and it has been touring globally since 2008.

Basically, Jerram worked with NPO Sing for Hope to install 60 pianos across the five boroughs of New York City. They were located in parks, streets, plazas etc and were available to anyone to just get on and play. Henri Matisse's granddaughter painted 4 of them and everyone from concert pianists to street urchins have tinkled these very public ivories.

Apparently Jerram came up with the idea in his hometown of Bristol England, where he was continually taking his washing to the laundromat. He was disturbed by the lack of interaction between fellow laundrette-goers and thought "put a piano in here, it can act as a catalyst for conversation."

The project has traveled to Sydney, Barcelona, London and Sao Paolo to name a few cities. Here in New York, everything from chopsticks to Chopin has been belting out in the open air for the past 2 weeks. Here are the pianos I came across.

Astor Place

Gansevoort plaza

Walking Men

When traveling to different cities around the world, have you ever stopped to look at the traffic icons for "stop" and "walk"? Have you ever noticed how different each country's icons are and wondered what they would look like lined up next to each other so you can see how different they really are?

Well, now you can see 99 of them 'walking' the streets of Tribeca. Sick of all the construction sites and boring worksite facades in lower Manhattan, the Downtown Alliance, a non profit group, is commissioning art to visually refresh the current urban landscape. They have produced a public art program called Re:Construction. The aim is to turn construction sites into canvasses for "innovative public art and architecture".  One of the first pieces of art is Israeli-born photographer Maya Barkai's "Walking Men 99". This 500 foot long work covers the fence of 99 Church St, where the city's tallest residential tower and hotel is being developed. 

Barkai has always been fascinated by the global walk icons, so has constructed here 99 of them marching side by side along the plywood wall. To collect them all, Barkai set up a website where she asked travelers to post photos of the walking men from around the world. She then put them together by city. They include a soldier from Fredericia, Denmark, a man in a hat from East Berlin, and a token pony-tailed girl from Utrecht, Netherlands! I must go down and find our aussie walking man. 

IMAGES: Carol Vogel for New York Times, downtownny, walkingmen99

Hot and Sweaty

I was stopped by a journalist in SoHo the other day and asked what I thought of the Calvin Klein billboard across the street. You can't miss it. It's spans a block on the side of a building overlooking East Houston St. And it's hot. Or pornographic, depending on your point of view.

Apparently SoHo residents are up in arms over Calvin's latest billboard featuring a sweaty Eva Mendes in extremely sexy lingerie tugging at the white boxers of a very "fit" looking male model.  This is not the first time a Calvin Klein ad has caused controversy. Last June the brand had to pull another billboard from the same site featuring a threesome/orgy:

And who can forget the Kate Moss "heroin chic" ads from the early 90's or the provocative Obsession ads?

Then there are the Abercrombie and Fitch billboards/ store cladding which don't seem to cause contraversy, which is weird given they still feature larger than life nude male torsos and a lot of crotch:

I love them all. For me, this "street art" is all part of New York's urban fabric. You walk along a normal street and then you are suddenly hit with a giant ad. This one for Barney's is in my hood:

And this DKNY billboard was iconic in SoHo for nearly 2 decades:

Unfortunately, this has now been replaced by the drab and uncreative Hollister logo, as they are the new tenants of the building:

The Louis Vuitton building on Fifth Avenue has currently turned itself into a giant ad for its new collection of city guides.

So continue the contraversy I say. And keep New Yorkers on their toes.

Images: Flickr