About the Exhibition
Unidentified Object is an eight-ton 11.5’-tall sculpture, carved from black basalt by Isamu Noguchi (1905-1988, b. Los Angeles, CA). Public Art Fund’s exhibition will mark the first installation of a Noguchi in a public space in New York City. Noguchi’s remarkable career has been cited as the most varied and far-reaching in the history of contemporary sculpture. No other sculptor of the age has extended his art into so many areas of public life, which makes this installation especially auspicious for the Public Art Fund with its mandate to enhance and humanize the public environment through art.
Said to resemble Noguchi’s Stone of Inner Seeking at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the new work is mounted on a 15-ton, 6’ tall granite core base from a quarry in Ausable Forks, N.Y., generously contributed by Cold Springs Granite Co. through its subsidiary, Lake Placid Granite.
Upholding Noguchi’s self-proclaimed “love affair with stone,” the piece underlines the artist’s commitment to public art with his quest to “bring sculpture into a more direct involvement with the common experience of man.” Called by critics “the purest of living sculptors,” the artist is simultaneously one of the most socially oriented and humanistic.