Art in public

188 articles

Public art is an art genre in which the concept, function, and form of the work are created through public discourse and for the general public. The works of public art are there for public access and often appear in public spaces, serving as a powerful avenue for the artist to express to the general public.

Essentially, public art engages the viewer outside of traditional exhibition halls, museums, and art galleries. It appeals to the masses through interventions, ideas, actions, performances, and visuals. Today’s public artists look to redefine cardinal concepts such as social engagement, collective identity, social contract, and community.

Artist David Brooks & These massive rooftops on Manhattan’s last undeveloped lot

Imagine viewing rooftops at eye level with pedestrians in Manhattan, New York? That seems nearly impossible when you consider New York has more than 300 high-rise buildings taller than 150 meters. This means that to really appreciate the city’s landscape of rooftops, one has to climb to the rooftop of another landmark building or take […]

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Christo’s Mastaba – From Abu Dhabi to London

Christo’s first permanent large-scale work, The Mastaba, would have been the world’s largest sculpture and installed 160km south of the city of Abu Dhabi. The planning of this enormous installation begins in 1977. It was originally conceived as a sculpture for the desert in Abu Dhabi. Christo and his wife and long-term partner Jeanne-Claude drew

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Yayoi Kusama’s Yellow Trees covers entire buildings in New York

In celebration of Yayoi Kusama’s past retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art earlier in 2012, two off-site projects took place. In one of them, Kusama’s rhythmic dotted “Yellow Tree motif transformed a construction site in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan into a giant canvas. A detail of the original painting Yellow Trees (1994)

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Wilfredo Prieto’s Apolítico – Stripping iconic flags of their familiar color

Apolítico, created in 2001 by Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto (1978), was a collection of 45 flags from different countries around the world. Prieto chose the countries based on the fact they were all recognized by the United Nations. In an interesting twist, the artist stripped the color from the flags and kept the abstract and

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Tom Fruin’s Watertower – Made of 1000 scrap plexiglass pieces

Not many artists enjoy the privilege of having their pieces displayed in New York City’s prime locations, but artist Tom Fruin does enjoy this. His creation of the Water Tower is a sight to behold and can be easily viewed from FDR Drive, parks and streets of Dumbo, Manhattan Bridge, Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge Park

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Impressive photos of Tokyo’s Hotaru Firefly festival on Sumida river

Fireflies have become a rare sight in Japan. Once they used to glow their low light all over the country in the summer time but now they have become an uncommon sight even in rural areas. Last month 100,000 LED lights floated down through Tokyo’s city centre on the Sumida river mimicking a stream of

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What do you think about Robert Montgomery’s poem billboards?

Robert Montgomery is a Scottish/British artist, poet, and sculptor famous for his site-specific billboards that are created from light and text, and also fire poems. Montgomery is also the associate publisher of Dazed & Confused. His works border melancholic post-situationist tradition. The artist believes that art should be taken out of galleries and be placed

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Krink’s / Craig Costello’s intriguing drip paintings in Hawaii

Craig Costello became known for his distinctive graffiti work on the streets of New York City in the 1990s. His breakthrough came when he started experimenting with homemade ink markers using a mixture of ink and other materials. This resulted in a signature drippy effect that set his work apart from others. The drippy aesthetic

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Jazoo Yang (양 자주) created these unusual murals in South Korea

Jazoo Yang is a South Korean artist who lives and works in Beijing and Seoul. She uses her paintings and installations to document others’ solitude, often in interesting ways. Her paintings, which she creates by using brushes or knives, are usually not finished so that the surface becomes the infinite space for her. Yang has

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Cyprien Gaillard’s massive neon sculpture of an Indian overlooks Berlin

The mascot of the American baseball team Cleveland Indians, popularly known as Chief Wahoo, is as highly recognized as it is controversial. That makes Cyprien Gaillard’s (b. 1980) installation on top of Haus der Statistik, an abandoned government building in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, a headline magnet. At times, the arbitrariness of what symbolic icons can make

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