Commissioned by New York City's Public Art Fund, the non-for-profit arts organization that offers free exhibitions to the public within the urban environment of New York, People engages citizens through varied ways of use including sitting, touching, and playing, among others. Consisting of a fountain, a small room and a basketball hoop and handball wall, the three sculptures, dispersed at the Southern end of the park, are self-referential in language and design, while simultaneously responding to the surrounding context of the city itself. Large in scale, yet fitting the civic landscape, these selected works offer some perspective to the urban ethos of Manhattan while also referencing the iconic tall buildings that the city is so famously known for.
Made of cement, local trees — from nearby Dutchess County in New York's Hudson Valley — and found objects, the artist creates three sculptures that function in the realm of the everyday, far removed from the elitist notion "art". These works evoke a sense of familiarity and, possessing a tactile quality, they become more accessible as well. "I called the project People because to me the most interesting thing about the works isn't the objects themselves but this potential they have to operate in the everyday," Tuazón remarks, "the fact that each of these things will get used by innumerable people in ways that I can't anticipate or even imagine."


Each of the installations in People is distinct in its own right, functioning both as a singular object as well as part of a larger group

Through 26 April 2013
Oscar Tuazon: People
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Heights, New York