Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

Sol LeWitt Showcased in New York’s City Hall Park

by Ian Volner | Tuesday, May 17, 2011

An outdoor exhibition of the work of late artist Sol LeWitt will be taking over Manhattan’s City Hall Park beginning May 24 in an exhibition titled, “Sol LeWitt Structures: 1965-2006.” Twenty-seven of LeWitt’s quasi-conceptual, quasi-minimalist bodies of work will be on view right in front of the seat of municipal government through December 2, courtesy of New York’s Public Art Fund.

“Sol LeWitt spent much of his career in New York City and for years had a studio on the Lower East Side,” says Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “He drew his inspiration from our city, and I know New Yorkers and visitors who take in this first-of-its-kind collection of structures will be just as inspired by his work.”

Featuring such large-scale works as 1967′s “Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes” and the 25-foot-high “Tower (Columbus),” the show highlights modular works from throughout the artist’s 40-year career, many of them displayed together here for the first time. Geometric masses of simple forms built into elaborate and often mesmerizing assemblages, the pieces exude an aura at once uncanny and familiar, echoing the urban landscape of skyscraper-bound Manhattan and critiquing the reductive, repetitive character of the modern city.

The show follows a May 4 Public Art Fund panel conversation on LeWitt’s life and work that featured friends and colleagues like artist Pat Steir and gallery founder Paula Cooper.

Images from top: “Splotch #15” (2005), acrylic on fiberglass, view from “Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls, and Twirls” (April 26-October 30, 2005), The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; “Three x Four x Three” (1984), painted aluminum, Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Walker Special Purchase Fund, 1987.