Brooklyn-based sculptor Heather Rowe investigates the transitional space between architecture, sculpture, and installation through perspectival framing, formal inversion, and material deconstruction. Rowe‘s latest work, Beyond the Hedges (Slivered Gazebo), is a site-specific installation of mirrors, corridors, and spatial slices presented at Socrates Sculpture Park; it is her first outdoor public artwork.
 
Beyond the Hedges (Slivered Gazebo) inverts the routine relationships we have with our surroundings by restructuring the familiar and reimagining architectural experiences. While many experience architecture in a state of distraction, Beyond the Hedges invites us to focus beyond our current space. Rowe interprets the traditional gazebo or trellis—structures typically placed within a park to frame picturesque views—as a sliced and cropped dimensional space that, sandwiched between pieces of plywood, becomes the framed view. Inspired by Peter Joel Harrison’s illustrated book Gazebos and Trellises, the plywood shapes suspend fragile moments of the garden pavilion, frozen in precarious states of decay or undoing. Complicating the internal network of latticework are mirrored insertions, offering an active relationship to the natural surrounds and Park visitors.
 
Heather Rowe is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York who received her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries including MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Galerie Zink, Berlin, Germany; D’Amelio Terras, New York; Michael Benevento Gallery, Los Angeles; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; White Columns, New York; and Artists Space, New York; and in 2008, her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial.
 
Media Inquiries:
Katie Denny
kd@socratessculpturepark.org
718-956-1819 ext. 12

In collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI), Socrates Sculpture Park presents do it (outside), an exhibition conceived of and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. With historical antecedents in Dada and Fluxus, do it (outside) is a selection of artists' instructions interpreted by other artists, performers, community groups, and the public. The instructions and resulting works will be presented outdoors utilizing a site-specific design by Christoff : Finio Architecture, the NY-based architecture and design studio of Taryn Christoff and Martin Finio. In the last 20 years, versions of do it have been presented in over 50 venues worldwide, giving new meaning to the concept of the “Exhibition in Progress.”
 
do it (outside) at Socrates Sculpture Park will be the first presentation of the exhibition in New York City and the first to be presented completely outdoors in a public art venue. The opening of the exhibition on May 12 coincides with the launch of the publication, do it: the compendium (co-published by Independent Curators International and D.A.P.) from which the instructions presented have been selected.
 
do it (outside) sparks a critical conversation about the exchange and transformation of ideas by engaging a diverse group of people to create extraordinary works by internationally accomplished artists. At Socrates, over sixty published artist instructions will be brought into existence by artists, performers, community groups, and the public resulting in installations that range from the explicitly sculptural, to the performative, to the poetic or absurd. Socrates Sculpture Park will produce a digital publication to accompany do it (outside) to document the process and participants.
 
This 20th-anniversary show premieres a significant number of new instructions along with those from the first do it experiments. Artists’ instructions presented at Socrates Sculpture Park will include:
John Baldessari, Jerome Bel, Paul-Armand Gette, Joan Jonas, Ilya Kabakov, Alison Knowles, Suzanne Lacy, Lucy Lippard, David Lynch, Betrand Lavier, Paul McCarthy, Yoko Ono, Clifford Owens, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Kazuyo Sejima, Gabriel Sierra, Andreas Slominski, Ai Weiwei, and Franz West among many others.
 
Media Inquiries:
Katie Denny
kd@socratessculpturepark.org
718-956-1819 ext. 12

Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York are pleased to announce the selection of Toshihiro Oki architect for tree wood as the winner of this year’s “Folly” competition – an extraordinary opportunity for emerging architects and designers to experiment and build large-scale projects for outdoor exhibition.
 
Socrates Sculpture Park and the League launched “Folly” in 2012 as a residency and exhibition program to explore the intersections between architecture and sculpture. “Folly” has grown from a pilot initiative to a highly anticipated competition – submissions increased by 40% from last year - for emerging architects and designers to conceive, design, build, and exhibit original works in the public realm.
 
tree wood will be a rigid yet airy geometrical wooden structure placed within a grove of trees – a lush and dense area at Socrates Sculpture Park. Visitors will peer into the structure through the floor beams where a formal, ornate chandelier will be suspended. The installation creates a dialogue between built structures and systems with the irregular and organic.
 
Toshihiro Oki architect – consisting of team members Toshihiro Oki, Jen Wood and Jared Diganci - was selected from over 150 submissions by a jury of architects and artists who reviewed over 150 submissions, including Michael Arad, Architect, Partner, Handel Architects; Orly Genger, Visual Artist; John Hatfield, Executive Director, Socrates Sculpture Park; Granger Moorhead, Architect, Principal, Moorhead & Moorhead; and Billie Tsien, Architect, Principal, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.
 
“Folly” is an interpretation of the architectural folly. Especially popular among the Romantics of the 18th and 19th centuries, architectural follies are small-scale structures, which often have no discernible purpose, that are placed within a garden or landscape as a means to draw the eye to specific points or to frame a view. The folly is a perfect subject for architects to investigate materiality, spatial interaction, and concepts about our urban and natural environment.
 
Visit the Architectural League for more information on the winning project and detailing the competition process, including prominent architectural themes woven throughout proposals: Read more at www.archleague.org.
 
The winner of the 2012 “Folly” competition was Curtain, a project conceived by architects Jerome W. Haferd and K Brandt Knapp. Curtain, which closed on March 31st, combined minimal structural framing with a mutable plastic chain that bisected the landscape from multiple angles, creating a voluminous whimsical interior space.
 
SUPPORT
 
Socrates Sculpture Park’s Exhibition Program is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mark di Suvero, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, and Spacetime C.C. This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by public funds from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
 
Special thanks to the City of New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, City Councilmembers Jimmy. Van Bramer and Peter F. Vallone Jr., and the Department of Parks & Recreation, Commissioner Veronica White.
 
Media Inquiries:
 
Katie Denny
kd@socratessculpturepark.org
718-956-1819 ext. 12