Jeremy Blake

July 1-September 30, 2003
Times Square
Image courtesy of Jeremy Blake

Jeremy Blake’s Cowboy Waltz drew inspiration from the legend of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, an eccentric gothic mansion of the eponymous rifle heiress Sara Winchester. The legend holds that ghosts of Winchester firearms victims haunted Ms. Winchester to her death. For The 59th Minute video Blake created a surrealist depiction of the Winchester legend by blending historic 16-millimeter photographs of the house, florid ink drawings, and animated imagery to create a dreamlike environment. The ravishing abstractions of Blake’s work starkly contrasted the ubiquitous and often blunt product placements of Times Square.

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Zhang Huan

July 1, 2003-April 1, 2004
The Ritz-Carlton, 2 West Street
Photo © 2003 Zhang Huan

Peace was an elegant sculpture by celebrated Chinese artist Zhang Huan exploring ancestral history and ethnic assimilation. The sculpture, a large bronze bell engraved with Chinese characters, embodied the cardinal themes of Huan’s work: the relation of experience to environment, identity to culture, and body to spirit. The artist, who lives in New York, modeled the sculpture after traditional bells found in Chinese temples and inscribed it with the names of his ancestors from his native village. Visitors were invited to push a gilded cast of the artist’s naked body into the bell, thereby forcing a symbolic confrontation between the artist and his ancestral past. Within view of Ellis Island, Peace encouraged the public to consider their own relationship to ancestry and identity.

Peace was the third installment of Art on the Plaza, a five year series of sculptural commissions presented by Creative Time in partnership with Millennium Partners, The Ritz-Carlton New York, and The Battery Park City Authority.

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