I'm very pleased to have just completed "Reconstructing a Midtown Forest" via chashama at the Donnell Library on 53rd St across the street from MoMA. Chashama has been curating various artist installations in the massive windows of the closed library for the past year. I am honored to be the first artist to take on the entire façade.



At 16' x 165' plus an installation room, it is my largest work yet. In a matter of two weeks, I hand silk screened 600 sf of geometric patterns and with the help of an All Star Assembly crew back painted and installed them across THIRTY THREE 5' x 8' window panels.
We spent hours just removing painters tape from the building patterns. AMEN!

To start, here's an overview of the eastern and western most window bays and the centerpiece over the old library's revolving doors.


The effect is that of looking up through buildings at exuberant foliage....wherein the colors and patterns intertwine with reflections off of a 20' x 16' mirrored wall sitting 30" behind the window plane. It draws from both the sylvan natural history of the site and the modern Midtown vernacular of the ever present reflection to create the sensation of an immersive botanical mystery for half a block.




Some reflective hyper reality... where buildings I painted based on the buildings of 53rd Street and the origami inspired geometric fauxliage are layered with reflections of the buildings and foliage of 53rd St.


And then there's the installation room, which continues the forced perspective of the windows adjacent but instead of a mirror backing the room behind is visible and rich with more silk screened tessellating patterns swarming across the floor and creating a tape enhanced constellation across the walls.
(view from inside)


(views from outside)


Special thanks to Eric Gjerde who wrote the book on origami tessellations, let's me have my way with his patterns and actually folded origami in this very library while waiting to meet me at MoMA for the first time many years ago.

Visible day + night through May 31, 2011

Event info and more at chashama.org
More pictures here