Press Release
Artist Bio
Sponsorship
Location
Project Main Page

bronze

Public Art Fund Projects in Central Park
A collaboration with the Whitney Biennial

March 10, 2004 - May 30, 2004

At Doris C. Freedman Plaza,
Fifth Avenue and 60th Street

Public Art Fund, in collaboration with the Whitney Museum, presents installations by Paul McCarthy, Liz Craft, Olav Westphalen, David Altmejd, assume vivid astro focus, David Muller and Yayoi Kusama for the 2004 Biennial Exhibition. Building upon the outdoor presentation of Biennial works in 2002, this year's show includes artists' site-specific reactions to Central Park as well as several sculptural projects that were conceived independently of location. For the first time, the exhibition includes a weekend event of openings and participatory artists' projects in the park.

Liz Craft often casts everyday objects in fantastical scenarios, resulting in appealing show-stoppers that plant themselves at the busy intersection of pop culture and high art. Working in a variety of materials--including polyurethane, fiberglass, bronze and wood--Craft creates works that are both flamboyant and slightly sinister. Like fellow Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy, California native Craft takes inspiration from the familiar cultural landscape, referencing hippies, Hell's Angels, psychedelia, and other iconography in her sculptures. Near McCarthy's MJBH, Craft shows three versions of The Spare, a bronze sculpture of a prickly pear cactus growing from a discarded tire. Craft's trio of cacti would be a banal sight in any Southwestern landscape, but in New York they are exotic transplants from a desert junkyard, offering stark counterpoint to Central Park's lush grounds and playfully challenging our notions of "high" versus "low" art.

Artist Bio
Liz Craft was born in Los Angeles in 1970. She received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2002); Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (1998 and 2001); Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (2001); and Centrum für Gegenwartskunst Oberösterreich, Linz, Austria (2001). Recent group exhibitions include "Play It as It Lays," The London Institute Gallery, London (2002); "The Americans," Barbican Gallery, London (2000); and "Small Worlds: Dioramas in Contemporary Art," Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2000). Craft currently lives and works in LA.

Sponsorship
The Public Art Fund projects in Central Park, presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, are sponsored by Bloomberg and generously supported by Adam Lindemann.

This exhibition is made possible through the cooperation of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Location
Doris C. Freedman Plaza is located at the southeast corner of Central Park at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Nearest subway: N, R to Fifth Avenue stop or 4, 5, 6 to 59th Street stop.
View a map of Public Art Fund Projects in Central Park --A collaboration with the Whitney Biennial.