By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Sculptures of steel, aluminum, fiberglass and cinderblocks are drawing stares from tourists and toddlers alike in City Hall Park.
The 27 artworks, ranging from stark geometric forms to playful volcanoes of color, comprise the first-ever outdoor survey of Sol LeWitt's groundbreaking three-dimensional creations, which he dubbed "structures."
"For the first time, audiences will get a sense of Sol LeWitt's whole body of work, with 27 pieces together in one location," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said last week at the opening.
The show, called "Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006," traces the evolution of LeWitt's ideas about sculpture over the 40 years of his leadership in the minimalism and conceptualism movements. LeWitt died in New York City in 2007, at the age of 78.
LeWitt's earliest sculptures on display are the bare-bones white aluminum cubes he created in the 1960s as a way of stripping his work down to its most basic form.
LeWitt later began working with concrete blocks, creating stepped pyramids that rise in clean lines like skyscrapers. The two concrete-block sculptures on display in City Hall Park — "Pyramid (Munster)" near Broadway and "Tower (Columbus)" on the plaza across from the Brooklyn Bridge entrance — feature prominent, and necessary, signs reading "Please Do Not Climb."
Toward the end of his life, LeWitt eschewed geometry in favor of more organic, free-flowing forms. "Splotch," 2005, located at the southern entrance of City Hall Park, is a cascade of rainbow-painted fiberglass, a mountain that is as ebullient as the pyramids are exact.
Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund, said City Hall Park is the perfect location for the retrospective, because the surrounding buildings provide a fitting reflection of the show's variety.
"His geometric, white forms contrast with the organic, picturesque park setting, while they also resonate strongly with the surrounding Manhattan grid and the stepped profiles of its signature skyscrapers," Baume said in a statement.
"The later work, with its complex and irregular forms, anticipates the vocabulary of more recent architecture, including Frank Gehry’s undulating new tower at 8 Spruce St."
"Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006" runs through Dec. 2. Visit the Public Art Fund's website for more information and a free smartphone app.
