TIMES SQUARE — A pair of Brooklyn artists are asking passersby to take a moment to spin a massive wooden prayer wheel and to reflect on what we pray for in modern society.
FAILE: Wishing on You was unveiled on Broadway between 41st and 42nd Streets on Monday after its artists and builders spent all night scrambling to assemble it, creators Patrick McNeil, 39, and Patrick Miller, 39, said.
The massive wooden structure is a riff off of traditional Tibten prayer wheels that are generally carved with Sanskrit mantras and filled with tiny, wrapped scrolls on which prayers are written.
The massive wheel now crowning Time Square, on the other hand, is covered in pastel-colored, words and images that look like retro advertisements for strip clubs, bars, bodegas and other sights common to New York City. Some of the words and images are appropriated from iconic signs spotted in the city now but also from decades past. Other imagery was invented by the artists or used in earlier works.
FAILE: Wishing on You is part of a larger exhibition at Brooklyn Museum by the artists who call themselves FAILE. McNeil and Miller have known each other since high school in Arizona and have been creating art together since 1998, they said.
The idea for totems and prayer wheels first came to the duo in 2008 as a way to critique the materialism and greed they saw, Miller said.
"What do we pray for in a modern society, how do we find meaning," Miller asked.
The duo, who've dotted the cityscape with prayer wheels and totems like this before, have never installed anything nearly this large, McNeil said.
"It's a lot harder to spin than we expected," McNeil admitted.
Spinning the wheel activates a wind turbine motor and a rechargeable batter that sparks lights around the top of the wheel.
After the barriers came down around the wheel on Monday morning, clumps of passersby mustered the courage to climb onto the platform and push the wheel.
The wheel will be on display and open 24-hours a day for your spinning pleasure until Sept. 1. FAILE's work at Brooklyn Museum that includes an arcade and a temple installation will also be up until Oct. 4.
