Untitled (Greenhouse)
Wood, steel, Plexiglas, cast plastic, and Kartell Icon lamp

Untitled (Windowboxes)
Stainless steel, MDF, plastic, paint, foam, and vinyl juggling ball

Untitled (Mountain Peaks)
Cast polyurethane

October 26, 2005 – September 10, 2006

Public Art Fund is proud to present a new exhibition of contemporary art at MetroTech Center. Material World features new commissions by Rachel Foullon, Corin Hewitt, Matthew Day Jackson, Peter Kreider, and Mamiko Otsubo. The works, which range from personal monuments to visionary landscapes, are each made using materials that directly relate to or are inspired by the artist’s chosen subject matter.

Mamiko Otsubo’s sculptures, paintings and photographs portray the natural world and landscape through the cultural filters of design and industry. Otsubo takes conventional scenes of nature and represents them in three-dimensions, using image and abstraction as a means of highlighting the disparity between nature and landscape. By utilizing various synthetic materials and fabrication methods, Otsubo evokes what she describes as “a blended image of the picturesque sublime, the view from a drive in my automobile, and nuances of feeling created by modernist designs.”

Otsubo’s installation for the lobby of MetroTech One consists of three separate, untitled sculptures, which together transform the corporate space into an abstracted landscape. The largest sculpture is a simplified greenhouse structure built of steel and Plexiglas, and filled with a variety of acrylic greenery. The work is inspired in part by Henri Rousseau’s jungle paintings: a round, plastic lamp hangs low amidst the plants, like a sun in one of his dense landscapes. The second work, a two-part sculpture made of tinted plastic, sits on both ends of the lobby reception desk where flower arrangements might normally be. Although it is 3-D, the work is meant to suggest a two-dimensional “logo” of a mountain range. For the third work, Otsubo incorporates an existing strip of silver on the inside of the lobby’s window as a horizon line for a series of window-box landscapes. The lacquered boxes contain abstract interpretations of undulating landmasses, clouds, and a sun.

Artist Bio
Mamiko Otsubo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She was born in Nishinomiya City, Japan in 1974. She received a BA in economics from the University of California, San Diego (1997); a BFA in fine art from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California (2002); and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University (2004). Recent group exhibitions include “Protuberances” at Buia Gallery, New York (2004); MFA Thesis Exhibition at Yale University (2004); and “Cross Town Traffic” at John Slade Ely House, New Haven.

Sponsorship
Material World 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, Forest City Ratner Companies, JPMorganChase, KeySpan, and Polytechnic University. Special thanks to Forest City Ratner Companies and First New York Management.

Location
MetroTech Center is located in Downtown Brooklyn between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenue at Myrtle Avenue. Viewing hours are dawn to dusk daily for outdoor works, Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm for Mamiko Otsubo’s sculptures in One MetroTech. Subway: A, C, F to Jay Street/Borough Hall, exit at Myrtle Promenade; R to Lawrence Street.

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