InstallationMay 2, 2022
A Major Installation by Hélio Oiticica at Socrates Sculpture Park
The exhibition Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 by Hélio Oiticica comes to life in Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens in collaboration with Projeto Hélio Oiticica and Americas Society. The large-scale immersive environment is based on Oiticica’s never-before-executed proposal from 1971 for Central Park, which he dreamed of as a public installation for New York City.
Oiticica, who died at 42 in 1980, could never present this work as the New York City’s bureaucracy made it difficult. He created several scaled-down versions of the original structure inspired by the City’s thriving underground culture, encouraging visitors to drift through the circular structure of curving corridors for a multi-sensory experience. The installation features plants and image projections that create a play of light, shadow, changes in opacity, framing, and orientation.
“This is an artwork that is as radical now as it was in the ’70s,” Aimé Iglesias Lukin, the director and chief curator of visual arts at the Americas Society, told ARTnews. “This an artwork that is free, has public access and invites them to participate and engage with them. We don’t have enough of that.”
She added that the choice of Socrates in the New York of 2022 is the “perfect” choice. “If you tried to do that today in Central Park, it would be completely sterilized because Central Park is a different Central Park from the one Oiticica was referring to,” Iglesias Lukin said.
Fifty-one years after its original conception, the scaled-down circular iteration, PN15, will be at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens (32-01 Vernon Blvd, Queens, NY). The installation will be on view from May 14 to August 14, and visitors will be able to enter it on Fridays from 5¬–7:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Curated by Jess Wilcox.
Oiticica, who died at 42 in 1980, could never present this work as the New York City’s bureaucracy made it difficult. He created several scaled-down versions of the original structure inspired by the City’s thriving underground culture, encouraging visitors to drift through the circular structure of curving corridors for a multi-sensory experience. The installation features plants and image projections that create a play of light, shadow, changes in opacity, framing, and orientation.
“This is an artwork that is as radical now as it was in the ’70s,” Aimé Iglesias Lukin, the director and chief curator of visual arts at the Americas Society, told ARTnews. “This an artwork that is free, has public access and invites them to participate and engage with them. We don’t have enough of that.”
She added that the choice of Socrates in the New York of 2022 is the “perfect” choice. “If you tried to do that today in Central Park, it would be completely sterilized because Central Park is a different Central Park from the one Oiticica was referring to,” Iglesias Lukin said.
Fifty-one years after its original conception, the scaled-down circular iteration, PN15, will be at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens (32-01 Vernon Blvd, Queens, NY). The installation will be on view from May 14 to August 14, and visitors will be able to enter it on Fridays from 5¬–7:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Curated by Jess Wilcox.
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