“How I Roll” – Plane Hovers Over Central Park- New Public Art Unveiled Today

I love running in Central Park. It is my urban backyard. It is my sanity. It is my love.  I am fond of  the people, the park benches, the trees, the flowers, the trails, the lakes.  I love the art, the music, the scenery, the landscapes, the skyline, the arches, the bridges, the statues.  I could go on.

Speaking of art, a new public art installation opens today at the entrance to the park at E. 60th Street and Fifth Avenue, known as Doris C. Freedman Plaza.

Paola Pivi’s new Public Art Fund commission, entitled How I Roll is a twin-engine Piper Seneca plane suspended on steel pillars, rotating on its own access.  The installation will run through August 26th.



 (photos care of Blouin Art Info).

Curious about who Paola Pivi is?  According to the Public Art Fund:

Through the recontextualization of familiar subjects, objects, and places, Paola Pivi’s work creates surprising and enigmatic situations that challenge viewers’ perceptions. Whether by staging a photograph of two zebras on a snowy mountaintop or transforming a contemporary art museum into an arena of screaming people, her irreverent installations, sculptures, performances, and photographs bring together playful and unexpected elements from our everyday world that present the inconceivable as real. In her new work, How I Roll, a twin-engine plane, supported by vertical steel posts at the wing tips, rotates in the center of Doris C. Freedman Plaza. This subversion of the expected—the juxtaposition of a busy Midtown Manhattan plaza with a Piper Seneca slowly rotating on its own axis—is central to Pivi’s practice. How I Roll is her first public art project in the United States.

Paola Pivi (b. 1971, Milan) lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work has been exhibited widely across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the United States. Solo exhibitions have been presented by Sculpture International Rotterdam (2010); Tate Modern, London (2009); Kunsthalle Basel (2007); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2006); MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2003); and Castello di Rivoli Museo D’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (1999), among others. Pivi received the Golden Lion Award at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Paola Pivi is represented by Galerie Perrotin and Massimo De Carlo.

My absolute favorite public art installation ever was that of Christ and Jean-Claude, called The Gates.  That was displayed in Central Park in 2005.  I was so sorry when that was dismantled. 

I’m really looking forward to seeing this plane greet me at the entrance of  Central Park this summer.  In my opinion it sure beats the prior public art installation in the same location, “Tornado,” a sculpture made of steel and inflated inner tube truck tires by artist Michael Sailstorfer.  Do you want to guess what I thought it looked like?

Tornado, by Michael Sailstorfer