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Public Art Show 'Five Elements' to Adorn Garment District Streets

 Artist Xin Song will be debuting her work 'Five Elements' on Broadway in the Garment District July 11, 2013.
Xin Song Debuts 'Five Elements' in Garment District
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MIDTOWN — The Garment District's getting elemental.

Big Apple artist Xin Song and the Fashion Center Business Improvement District are teaming up to unveil an outdoor art exhibit next week titled "The Five Elements," in honor of the Eastern spiritual philosophy that the world, and everything in it, is made up of water, fire, wood, metal and earth.

Five 8-foot high frames, each with a different element-themed photo collages of the neighborhood on one side, and black silhouettes on the other, will rise from each Broadway intersection from 36th to 41st streets starting July 11, organizers said.

"Everything here in front of Times Square, every element connects with the people, people who are living in this area or people from all over the world," said Song, who lives in Bay Ridge and works in a studio in the Garment District.

Each element will correspond to a different season, and the photographs will largely focus on a single color: Earth, which corresponds with the harvest in Song's work, will be captured through yellow tones to evoke the changing colors of the leaves in autumn. The back of each fixture, meanwhile, will consist of carved silhouettes meant to evoke the wrought-iron filigrees that are characteristic of New York City architecture.

“In recent years, this area has emerged as a creative and cultural center of New York City, and our Broadway art installations have become a highly-anticipated part of summer in this vibrant neighborhood,” Fashion Center BID president Barbara Blair Randall said in a statement. “Five Elements is a wonderful continuation of this public art series, and celebration of the district’s ongoing transformation.”

Five Elements will be on display through Aug. 30.