Artist:
Charles Mary Kubricht
Title:
Alive-Nesses: Proposal for Adaption
Year:
2012
Adress:
High Line, 30th Street
www.thehighline.org:
Charles Mary Kubricht has transformed park storage containers located on the High Line at the Rail Yards. The High Line at the Rail Yards is located between West 30th and West 34th Streets, and the installation is on view from the northern end of the park, near West 30th Street. Kubricht’s installation is inspired by dazzle, a type of protective design and coloration on animals described by Abbott Thayer in America and developed into military camouflage by Norman Wilkinson in Great Britain during World War I. Dazzle camouflage was used to confuse the enemy by disguising the ships and complicating the tracking of the ship’s movement. For the High Line, the artist will paint black and white disruptive patterns on park storage containers, altering the view of these large structures from the northern end of the High Line.
www.art.thehighline.org:
Kubricht’s installation is inspired by dazzle, a type of protective design and coloration on animals designed by Abbott Thayer in America and developed into military camouflage by Norman Wilkinson in Great Britain during World War I. Dazzle camouflage was used to confuse the enemy by disguising the ships and complicating the tracking of the ship’s movement. For the High Line, the artist has painted black and white disruptive patterns on park storage containers, altering the view of these large structures from the northern end of the High Line.
Alive-nesses: Proposal for Adaptation gives Kubricht the opportunity to play with the intrinsic geometry of objects using her large black and white geometric compositions. Positioned within the elevated cityscape provided by the High Line, the artist’s treatment of the park storage containers distorts their appearance and translates the act of viewing them into a heightened visceral experience. This technique invites the viewer to move and change directions, altering familiar visual information and questioning the objects’ shape and form, as well as the viewer’s field of vision.
www.charlesmarykubricht.com:
In my ongoing exploration of landscape, I have become interested in a type of camouflage that attempts to render an object 'unrecognizable' rather than 'invisible'. In fact, the figure becomes visually aggressive. The original form is concealed through heightened disorder, misdirection or disturbance. Such hyper-visible camouflage controls our perceptual experience by breaking up the continuity and regularity of the original form. The military adapted this more aggressive strategy of concealment to ships in World War I and II through a technique called Dazzle painting. My High Line art installation, titled Alivenesses: Proposal for Adaptation uses this technique.
This type of visual transformation of storage containers has the power to render the original object as unreadable, opening the potential to rewrite its meaning just as the High Line Park transformed industrial form into aesthetic form. The walkways and plants camouflage the industrial past by adapting to the original form in a way that reorganizes our perceptual experience with nature reducing the tension between nature and culture.
This High Line Art Commission is presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. High Line Art Commissions are made possible by Donald R. Mullen, Jr. This program is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Charles Mary Kubricht has transformed park storage containers located on the High Line at the Rail Yards. The High Line at the Rail Yards is located between West 30th and West 34th Streets, and the installation is on view from the northern end of the park, near West 30th Street. Kubricht’s installation is inspired by dazzle, a type of protective design and coloration on animals described by Abbott Thayer in America and developed into military camouflage by Norman Wilkinson in Great Britain during World War I. Dazzle camouflage was used to confuse the enemy by disguising the ships and complicating the tracking of the ship’s movement. For the High Line, the artist will paint black and white disruptive patterns on park storage containers, altering the view of these large structures from the northern end of the High Line.
www.art.thehighline.org:
Kubricht’s installation is inspired by dazzle, a type of protective design and coloration on animals designed by Abbott Thayer in America and developed into military camouflage by Norman Wilkinson in Great Britain during World War I. Dazzle camouflage was used to confuse the enemy by disguising the ships and complicating the tracking of the ship’s movement. For the High Line, the artist has painted black and white disruptive patterns on park storage containers, altering the view of these large structures from the northern end of the High Line.
Alive-nesses: Proposal for Adaptation gives Kubricht the opportunity to play with the intrinsic geometry of objects using her large black and white geometric compositions. Positioned within the elevated cityscape provided by the High Line, the artist’s treatment of the park storage containers distorts their appearance and translates the act of viewing them into a heightened visceral experience. This technique invites the viewer to move and change directions, altering familiar visual information and questioning the objects’ shape and form, as well as the viewer’s field of vision.
www.charlesmarykubricht.com:
In my ongoing exploration of landscape, I have become interested in a type of camouflage that attempts to render an object 'unrecognizable' rather than 'invisible'. In fact, the figure becomes visually aggressive. The original form is concealed through heightened disorder, misdirection or disturbance. Such hyper-visible camouflage controls our perceptual experience by breaking up the continuity and regularity of the original form. The military adapted this more aggressive strategy of concealment to ships in World War I and II through a technique called Dazzle painting. My High Line art installation, titled Alivenesses: Proposal for Adaptation uses this technique.
This type of visual transformation of storage containers has the power to render the original object as unreadable, opening the potential to rewrite its meaning just as the High Line Park transformed industrial form into aesthetic form. The walkways and plants camouflage the industrial past by adapting to the original form in a way that reorganizes our perceptual experience with nature reducing the tension between nature and culture.
This High Line Art Commission is presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. High Line Art Commissions are made possible by Donald R. Mullen, Jr. This program is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts.