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Photos: Mutations On The High Line, Including Beast-Human "Centipede" Circle
By
Scott Lynch
Published May 7, 2017
Modified May 7, 2017
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Scott Lynch
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By
Scott Lynch
Published May 7, 2017
Modified May 7, 2017
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Even in ever-changing NYC, the High Line has seen more than its share of transformations over the years, most strikingly going from industrial and dead-animal freight railway to tourist-clogged sensation hemmed in by luxury condos. The park's general aesthetic today reflects this history: humans can (and will) tame and shape the environment, but there's always the threat/promise that someday nature will regain control.
The High Line's new art exhibition Mutations, running nearly the length of the park, explores both the tension and the playful symbiosis of this relationship between humans and nature. There will eventually be twelve different works by twelve different artists, but most are already in place. Overlooking the dizzying construction site that is the Hudson Yards, for example, Larry Bamburg has a somewhat conceptual piece, a sharp, spindly, highly-engineered tower featuring motion-activated, high-definition cameras pointed at several perches, all for the purpose of looking at birds.
At the park's southern terminus overlooking Gansevoort Street, Viet Laurent Kurz has erected a pile of ancient (or future?) stone ruins, embedded with the ghosts of long-forgotten gods and overrun by giant salamanders. Near the park's grassy lawn, Jon Rafman takes the exhibition's theme literally with "The Swallower Swallowed," a discomfiting daisy-chain of ferocious consumption. And a pair of gramophones at the Flyover area play recordings of the Great Pacific garbage patch and the breathing of a person with black lung disease, courtesy of artists Joanna Malinowska and C.T. Jasper.
Continuing through the summer on the High Line are several other artworks of note, including Henry Taylor's huge mural opposite the 22nd Street bleachers, a summery dream of a piece called "The Floaters." You can also catch Zoe Leonard's plea/manifesto "I Want A President," the source of many anti-Trump protest signs this past winter, wheatpasted beneath the Standard hotel; and get a look at the finalists for first dibs atop the High Line Plinth, which will feature a series of massive sculptural works on the Spur starting in 2018. Personally I'm rooting for the menacing Drone to win, though the Chameleon Slide would be fun to photograph. And speaking of the Spur, you can peer over and get a sneak preview of the MC Escher-esque Vessel, as pieces of the monstrous sculpture now line the rail yard, awaiting installation.
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Scott Lynch
Photojournalist, food writer, preschool receptionist. Love NYC.
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