Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, presents the New Year Season, December 2017 – February 2018. As part of the Alliance’s commitment to showcasing the best of contemporary art, this season’s lineup includes works from ArandaLasch + Marcelo Coelho, UNDERVOLT & CO and FX Harsono as well as partnerships with Design Trust for Public Space, Clocktower, Asia Society Museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park.
Debra Simon, Times Square Arts director, said, “Through the darkness of winter, Times Square remains a center of light and love, alive with history and dedicated to improving by conscious design. For the 10th Anniversary of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, we invited firms to propose a heart to illuminate the theme “Labor of Love” – but “Labor of Love” is an apt lens on many of our projects this season, including our three Midnight Moment videos, which each depict in their own way an act of endurance that is personal, political, or simply human.”
February 1st – 28th
Window to the Heart
Artists: ArandaLasch + Marcelo Coelho
Presented in partnership with Design Trust for Public Space
Father Duffy Square between 46th and 47th Streets
The winning team of the 10th Annual Valentine Heart Design Competition will create the world’s largest lens in a pioneering feat of engineering made possible only by cutting-edge 3D-printing technology. Optically bending light toward its center, the sculpture will focus our attention on love with its Window to the Heart.
February 19th – 21st
Interference AV
Artists: UNDERVOLT & CO and musical acts TBA
Presented in partnership with Clocktower
AMC Empire 25, 234 W 42nd Street
Experimental video collective UNDERVOLT & CO. teams up with Clocktower to produce live projections on an epic scale for this three-night festival takeover of America’s top-grossing multiplex. The movie theater-turned-concert stage will feature dynamic collaborations with momentous musicians and UNDERVOLT artists including Peter Burr and Sabrina Ratté. The party overflows to the popcorn lobby, where Clocktower curates DJs and a zine fair. Tickets are free; follow @TSqArts and @Clocktower_NYC for essential RSVP announcements.
MIDNIGHT MOMENT
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million.
December 1 – 30
Pulse
Artist: Trine Lise Nedreaas
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
A hula-hooper uses her body as an axis to spin glowing LED hoops. Her gravity-defying work to maintain the rhythm suggests the human effort required to keep our world from collapsing. Exhibited nightly as Times Square prepares for New Year’s Eve, the video may also evoke the perpetual turning of time.
January 1 – 31
Writing in the Rain
Artist: FX Harsono
Presented in partnership with Asia Society Museum to coincide with the exhibition “After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History”
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
A seminal figure in the Indonesian contemporary art scene, Harsono has been deeply engaged with social and political issues, including the role of the artist in the recovery of repressed histories, cultures, and identities. Writing in the Rain is a stark depiction of the artist writing his name in Chinese characters with a brush as rain slowly washes the ink away.
February 1 – 28
Save the Presidents
Artists: Tali Keren and Alex Strada
Presented in partnership with Socrates Sculpture Park to coincide with “The Socrates Annual" exhibition
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
For the month of Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays, Times Square Arts presents a “day in the life” portrait of 43 monumental busts of former American Presidents. Rescued from the site of a closing sculpture park near Williamsburg, Virginia by the entrepreneur who was hired to demolish them, the statues sit, damaged but steadfast, in the light of the sun and the darkness of night.
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Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Visit TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
About Midnight Moment
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to Midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million. For more information, visit http://www.timessquarenyc.org/midnightmoment
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Artists
Trine Lise Nedreaas
The Norwegian artist Trine Lise Nedreaas is perhaps best known for her intriguing and beautiful films of lone performers. Through strictly directed, symbolically charged documentary based films of individuals, Nedreaas illuminates the large and the strange variety of human endeavours. Drawing from a long history of portraiture, her often humorous work is inspired by the lives of people through whose ideas, talents and demeanour she seeks a deeper reflection on the human condition. Nedreaas’ performers are filmed removed from the audiences and spectacles that usually surround them, left in a timeless space with only themselves and their act remaining.
Nedreaas' work has been shown at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; MoMA PS1, New York; Kunstwerke, Berlin; Palazzo delle Arti, Napoli; Everson Museum, NY; Kunstverein Schwerin; New Center for Contemporary Art, Louisville; MACRO, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome; Art Pavilion, Zagreb; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; ARGOS Centre for Art and Media, Brussels; and Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo, to name a few. Her work is represented in public and private collections worldwide.
FX Harsono
FX Harsono was born in 1949 in Blitar (East Java), Indonesia and lives and works in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was educated at the Jakarta Art Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia and Sekolah Tinggi Seni Rupa Indonesi (STSRI “ASRI”), Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In recognition of his decades long “commitment to art and to freedom of expression in art,” Harsono was awarded the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of Art in 2015, presented by the US embassy in Singapore, and in 2014 he was given the Prince Klaus Award honoring his “crucial role in Indonesia’s contemporary art scene for forty years.” His work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions around the world, including the seminal Traditions/Tensions: Contemporary Art in Asia at Asia Society in New York (1996), and the first Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia (1993). The Singapore Art Museum mounted a major career retrospective, FX Harsono: Testimonies, in 2010. He presented his first solo exhibition in the United States, Writing in the Rain, at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in 2012. Recent biennials include Indonesia’s Jogja Biennale (2013) and the 2016 Sydney Biennale. His work is currently on view in the Asia Society Museum exhibition After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History.
ArandaLasch
ArandaLasch is a New York and Tucson-based design studio established by Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch designing buildings, installations and furniture. Recognition includes the United States Artists Award, Young Architects Award, Design Vanguard Award, AD Innovators, and the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award. Their early projects are the subject of the books Tooling and more recently Trace Elements. ArandaLasch has exhibited internationally in galleries, museums, design fairs and biennials. Their work is part of the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York.
Marcelo Coelho
Marcelo Coelho is a Brazilian/American computation designer working on products, installations, and crowd experiences. Spanning a wide range of media, processes, and scales, his work explores the boundaries between matter and information, fundamentally expanding and enhancing the ways in which we interact and communicate. Marcelo’s creative work has been exhibited internationally, including places such as the Rio 2016 Paralympics Ceremonies, Ars Electronica, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Design Miami/, and can be found in private collections including the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art and The Rothschild Collection. Recognition for his work include two Prix Ars Electronica awards, VIDA 16.0 Award, and the W Hotels Designer of the Future Award. His work has also been published and featured extensively in outlets such as the New York Times, Wired, Fast Company, Financial Times and the Colbert Report, in addition to books and academic peer-reviewed journals. In addition to his studio practice, Marcelo is also a Lecturer at the MIT Department of Architecture and Head of Design at Formlabs. Prior to his practice, Marcelo Coelho received a Bachelor in Computation Arts from Concordia University and a Doctorate in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab.
Tali Keren & Alex Strada
Tali Keren (b. 1982, Jerusalem) and Alex Strada (b. 1988, New York City) met at Columbia University where they each received an MFA in Visual Art in 2016. Keren and Strada's multi-media projects center on the intersection of history, politics, representation, and language. Their collaborative work has been shown at the Anthology Film Archives, New York; Museum of Moving Image, New York; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; and at the Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania. They are currently participating in the Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship.
In addition, Strada's work has been shown at the Jewish Museum, New York; National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik; and Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo, Oaxaca, Mexico. Keren's work has been exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel.
Keren and Strada live and work in New York.
UNDERVOLT & CO.
UNDERVOLT & CO. is an internet-based collective involved in the circulation of time-based art across varied presentational formats. Founded in 2013, their work has been exhibited widely, often taking the form of installations, screenings, performances, workshops and ongoing online projects. With an emphasis on the immediacy of image and sound, as well as the mutability of technologies, Undervolt & Co. has cultivated a closely-knit network of international artists earnestly challenging the possibilities of their medium. In additional to providing a distribution framework for its artists, Undervolt & Co. works closely with curators, programmers and educators in the programming of audio-visual performances and event-based work to public audiences worldwide.
Partners
Asia Society Museum
Asia Society Museum organizes groundbreaking exhibitions of traditional, modern and contemporary Asian and Asian American art, taking new approaches to familiar masterpieces and introducing under-recognized arts and artists. The Asia Society Museum Collection comprises a renowned traditional art collection, including the initial bequests of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, and a contemporary art collection. Through exhibitions and public programs, Asia Society provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art, and in Asia today.
Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution based in New York, with state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, D.C., and Zurich. Asia Society Museum is located at 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City. For hours and more information, please visit AsiaSociety.org/NY.
The Design Trust for Public Space
The Design Trust for Public Space is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the future of public space in New York City. Our projects bring together city agencies, community groups and private sector experts to make a lasting impact—through design—on how New Yorkers live, work and play. Our work can be seen, felt and experienced throughout all five boroughs—from parks and plazas to streets and public buildings. The Design Trust saved the High Line structure, jumpstarted NYC’s first custom-built Taxi of Tomorrow, developed the Community Design School for Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and created the city’s first comprehensive sustainability guidelines that became the precursor to Local Law 86 and PlaNYC, now OneNYC. Visit http://designtrust.org/ for more information. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @designtrustnyc.
Socrates Sculpture Park
For more than thirty years Socrates Sculpture Park has been a model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Known for fostering experimental and visionary artworks, the Park has exhibited more than 1,000 artists on its five waterfront acres, providing them financial and material resources and outdoor studio facilities to create large-scale artworks on site. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset and is located at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, New York. http://socratessculpturepark.org
Clocktower Productions
Clocktower Productions is a non-profit art institution working in the visual arts, performance, music, and radio. Founded in 1972 in Lower Manhattan by MoMA PS1 Founder Alanna Heiss, Clocktower is the oldest alternative art project in New York, and its radio station, Clocktower Radio, was founded in 2003 as one of the first all-art online museum radio stations in the world. The institution functions as a laboratory for experimentation, working closely and collaboratively with artists, musicians, curators, writers and producers to develop, realize and present innovative and challenging work in all media, ranging from installation to performance and from experimental music to radio theater. By engaging both the physical resources of its partner organizations and Clocktower Radio’s access to a broad and international online audience, Clocktower disseminates experimental work to numerous communities, and promotes a rich cultural and social dialogue between artists, audiences, and institutions worldwide.
Times Square Advertising Coalition
Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) is a trade association comprised of major advertisers, retailers, real estate firms, media companies and other businesses involved in the outdoor sign industry in Times Square, along with organizations representing Broadway and the community. Members of TSAC include: ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales, Clear Channel Spectacolor, Daktronics, D3 LED, Digital Domination, Hines Management, Jamestown One Times Square, Lamar Advertising Company, Landmark Sign & Electric, Metro Media Technologies, Newmark Knight Frank, North Shore Neon, P.R.omotion!, Sherwood Outdoor, SL Green, Times Square Alliance, The WOW Factor and Thomson Reuters. www.timessquareadcoalition.org. Follow TSAC on twitter at @TSACNYC.
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Media Contacts:
For Times Square Arts:
TJ Witham
212.452.5234 | TJWitham@TimesSquareNYC.org
Marisa Wayne
212.843.9216 | MWayne@Rubenstein.com
For TSAC:
Justine DiGiglio
212.205.6632 │Justine@NicholasLence.com