Press Release
Artist Bio
Sponsorship
Location
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wood, paint, gravel, shrubs

Parklife

October 9, 2002 -
September 15, 2003

MetroTech Center, Brooklyn

Public Art Fund and the Commons Associates are proud to present a new exhibition of contemporary art at MetroTech Center. Parklife continues MetroTech's commitment to supporting the work of emerging New York artists. Each year artists are asked to respond to the Commons, the public spaces surrounding the vibrant downtown areas of MetroTech Center and Brooklyn Polytechnic. The artists selected for this year's exhibition - Isidro Blasco, Liz Craft, Peter Gould, Elke Lehmann, and Franco Mondini-Ruiz - have each created new works that react to the area's landscaped surroundings.

After visiting MetroTech on several occasions, Gould noticed an unpaved walking path cutting across a lawn, not far from the paved walkways in the Commons. For The Crooked Mile, Gould has exaggerated this rather mundane interaction with nature-the everyday foot traffic of people short-cutting across the lawn-by upgrading the casually worn path to a fully landscaped element. His meandering path has white pea gravel, a ranch-style fence with pastel details, new shrubbery, a footbridge, and a gate. Although functional, this "improved" passageway is a colorful riff on the constructed environment of the Commons, one that prompts viewers to experience a familiar place anew.

Artist Bio
Peter Gould, a Brooklyn-based artist, creates sculptural works that consider the ways that suburban planning and corporate landscaping affect our relationship to nature. "From strip malls and business parks to off-ramps and well groomed bedroom communities, nature is used to soften these hard mundane and repetitive designs," says Gould. Often employing pre-fab materials to create recreational landscapes-a plywood picnic table amongst a grove of Formica trees, or a park ranger's station made from bricks and particleboard-Gould suggests that people are most at ease with the natural world when it is not threatening or raw. His works, artificial and precise, echo the controlled and orderly environments in which we spend our free time, where nature is a comfortable backdrop rather than an active force.

Sponsorship
Parklife at MetroTech Center is part of an ongoing program organized by the Public Art Fund and sponsored by MetroTech Commons Associates, an organization that consists of MetroTech companies Bear Stearns & Company, KeySpan Energy, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Forest City Ratner Companies, Polytechnic University, Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), DOITT and E-911. Special thanks to First New York Management.

Public Art Fund is a non-profit arts organization supported in part with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and through generous contributions from corporations, foundations, and individuals.

Location
MetroTech Center is situated in the in the Civic Center/Borough Hall area of Downtown Brooklyn.
By Subway: M, N, or R to Lawrence Street Station or the A, C, or F to Jay Street/ Borough Hall, exit at Myrtle Promenade.