Artist twists buildings to create ‘dancing city’
If you’ve had the chance to take a leisurely walk around Downtown this summer, you may have noticed a few curious architectural additions.
Iconic buildings, such as the Seagram Building, Metropolitan Life Insurance and the New York City Courthouse appear in miniature scale, but in the most unusual ways. These stainless-steel sculptures are coiled or comically stretched, tall and snaking toward the sky.
They are the work of Cuban-born artist Alexandre Arrechea, now a New Yorker since moving there two years ago from Spain.
The Courthouse sculp-ture is in Gateway Center plaza; the Metropolitan Life Insurance building is at the intersection of Liberty and Stanwix Avenues; and the Seagram building is installed by the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
The sculptures were first installed in Pittsburgh in conjunction with Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival in June. They are part of a 10-piece project titled “No Limits,” which was fabricated in Brooklyn and installed in 2013 along Park Avenue in New York City.
This presentation of the project comes courtesy of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Magnan Metz Gallery in New York, which represents the artist. The sculptures will be on display through Sept. 5.
At nearly 20 feet tall, the sculptures are not only a dialogue between art and architecture, the artist says, but “about negotiating space” and playing on the idea of “elastic architecture as a metaphor for the challenges and opportunities of shifting conditions and new realities.” The result is a “dancing city” or building in perpetual motion that can continuously spin, wind down, fall or rise again.
“I focused on those landmarks that were well-known,” Arrechea says. “Each is a place that most people already know that has been twisted. So, of course that will draw the attention of people.”
Born in Trinidad, Cuba, in 1970, Arrechea graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana in 1994. He was a founding member of the collective Los Carpinteros (1991-2003). As a solo artist, Arrechea represented his homeland in the first ever Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011), as well as the 11th Havana Biennial (2012).
Throughout his work, Arrechea uses sculpture, watercolor and video to ponder the idea of destabilizing traditional concepts held about icons and their function in society. The art is meant to create a dialogue with the public that raises questions of control, power, surveillance and one’s role within these categories. Through iconic architectural buildings and urban spaces, Arrechea plays and entices the viewer to explore this concept.
Both the “Seagram” and “Metropolitan Life Insurance” sculptures appear coiled, the impetus of which was based on the shape of fire hoses.
“Fire hoses are a very integral part of every building,” Arrechea says. “They are there to protect the building. So, the idea to link the building to its own structure, and, lets say, that the fire hose is part of the structure of the building. It may be something you don’t think of initially.”
In this way, the buildings are transformed into a tool, or snail-like shapes, as if one could reel these rigid structures in like a hose — expanding and contracting with the rise and fall of the economy and the socio-cultural and sociopolitical shifts that occur with economic changes.
“Courthouse” is based on the idea of a gate.
“It’s more of a traffic barrier, as if it can be pulled up and down,” Arrechea says. “It’s linked to the idea of how people are allowed to go free or not, given their situation.”
Arrechea says that to look at architecture through this approach, whether it relates to something you see or not, has always been important to him. “Especially because it relates to space,” he says.
“I think when people get familiar with architecture in this different way, that it will definitely transform how they approach their surroundings,” Arrechea says. “I come from the countryside of Cuba, and I remember the first time I traveled outside of Cuba, I was impressed by the architecture. We have beautiful architecture that was done in Cuba in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, but I felt like the architecture I saw was like churches. So big and towering over me.
“It’s a way of dealing with the city in a different way, to make the city yours,” he says. “You start studying every building. You start learning the history of every building, and you become less a foreigner and more of a participant. That’s what I’m looking for.
“I think it’s important to understand that the world belongs to us. It’s not anybody else’s world. And to me, that is important. I try to make it mine in that way, through sculpture, which is something that I practice daily.”
(From the: Trib Live)
