Exhibition Info
ON VIEW: JUNE 5 – AUGUST 14, 2018
At the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival
Prospect Park Bandshell
Join us for the ARTIST RECEPTION on THU, JUN 28 at 9PM at the Bandshell!
(Please note date/time change of this reception.)
As part of its 40th year anniversary season, BRIChas commissioned HEDERA, a monumental light installation by Grimanesa Amorós, the interdisciplinary New York-based Peruvian artist who has “built a reputation for dazzling light installations that suggest the topographies of distant planets” (The New York Times T Magazine). HEDERA, installed at the Prospect Park Bandshell as a special element of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, seeks to intensify the relationship between public space and community through the conversation it generates. From June 5 to August 11, many thousands of visitors from Brooklyn and beyond will be able to interact with the sculpture.
Amorós researches the locations, histories, and communities of her installation sites—from striking locations like Scottsdale, Arizona’s Soleri Bridge to Times Square to La Torre de los Vientos in Mexico City—and creates her work through an organic and instinctive process. This intuitive relationship to technology is a distinctive feature of Amorós’ practice. Rather than interrupt the natural flow of people and events in the park, HEDERA’s light sequences are meant to reflect and amplify its environment. For its structure, measuring some 40 ft x 40 ft x 24 ft., Amorós took inspiration from the form of the Bandshell and the natural beauty and grandeur of the park’s landscape. Amorós states “HEDERA means ivy in Latin; my piece’s overall structure was inspired by the natural beauty and grandeur of Prospect Park’s plant life. For me, HEDERA is a romance with the unknown.”
Amorós has created a custom lighting sequence of flowing and pulsating red and white tubing that crowns the sculpture in light. LED tubes will both cover the structure and create an immersive environment for viewers who will freely walk underneath and around the work. Viewers who venture into the center of HEDERA will see their own reflection in the cupola above. At the nucleus of HEDERA, visitors will see smaller protruding domes—forms that suggest a plant’s central bud. Their reflective shadows will offer images of a flower blooming, of growth and creation. Amorós has stated that it is her wish that this sculpture co-exist with its viewers, bringing them closer to an ideal world where individuals can unite in celebration of creativity, nature, diversity and a shared humanity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Grimanesa Amorós was born in Lima, Peru and lives and works in New York City. She is an interdisciplinary artist with diverse interests in the fields of social history, scientific research and critical theory, which have greatly influenced her work. Her works incorporate elements from sculpture, video, lighting, and technology to create site-specific light installations to engage architecture and create community. Amorós has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.