Paola Pivi: How I Roll

According to a famous anecdote, three pioneers of modern art Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, and Fernand Leger are said to have visited the 1912 Paris Air Show. Observing a propeller, Brancusi said, “Now that is what I call sculpture!” A hundred years later, Paola Pivi’s How I Roll suggests that the modernist romance with industrial design lives on.

Pivi’s sculpture incorporates an entire six-seat plane that has been specially modified, enabling it to rotate through 360 degrees while held aloft on its wing tips. The artist’s transformation allows this Piper Seneca to be seen in an entirely new way. Airborne but flightless, its steady circular movement is mesmerizing. The shift of context from airport runway to New York City plaza is equally dramatic. It creates the striking and surreal experience of a familiar object seen in an unexpected place doing a very unfamiliar thing. Like a child’s dream come to life, How I Roll is typical of the artist’s bold and playful imagination.

This exhibition is curated by Nicholas Baume.

Born in Milan, Italy, in 1971 and now based in Anchorage, Alaska, Paola Pivi’s diverse artistic practice embraces sculpture, photography, video, and performance. Several previous works have also featured large machines, including an overturned tractor-trailer and a helicopter placed upside down. How I Roll is Pivi’s first public commission in the United States.