“No Limits,” In the Gloaming
Skyscraper-inspired swirls of steel and aluminum sculpture provide free public art
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Three large-scale sculptural works have left their initial Park Avenue placement and ventured south to sit among other iconic Manhattan skyscrapers they re-envision. Situated between and around New York City’s Union Square and Flatiron District, Cuban-born, Madrid-based artist Alexandre Arrechea‘s “No Limits” toys with the theme of flexibility in the midst of stone-and-steel-strong architecture. This outdoor installation, composed of aluminum and steel sculptures, which rise up to 20 feet in height, further bends, presses and warps the way we visualize landmarks while accurately maintaining some of the original buildings’ intricacies.
Coiled up into a spiral and sat at 23rd Street next to the Flatiron Building, Arrechea’s version of the MetLife Tower re-imagines one of New York’s most recognizable buildings as a firehouse-like swirl.
On 25th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues, Arrechea’s Flatiron Building hangs from a flagpole in the plaza of Baruch College. In a broad and bold move, the artist flattened the piece, yielding the building’s world-famous triangle shape in exchange for a play on the actual name.
Just above Union Square, at Broadway and 18th Street, Arrechea’s take on The Sherry-Netherland hotel bends into an almost circle, broken only where its roots appear to nip at its spire. Elongated and bright red, the piece bears resemblance to an ouroboros, and calls into question architecture’s mark on the development of a city and even the art world.
This continued display of free, outdoor art was coordinated through a partnership between the Magnan Metz Gallery and the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Arts Program. Although the MetLife sculpture will only be up until mid-August, the other pieces will be viewable for the next six months.
Thank you to Windows Phone for sponsoring In the Gloaming on Cool Hunting. All images for this series, unless otherwise noted, have been shot using the PureView camera on Nokia’s Lumia 928 and are presented without any retouching. Click through for your chance to win a Nokia Lumia 928.
