Architecture as Inquiry for the NYC Public
Corner Plot is a new public art piece that challenges the public’s perceptions of personal space, after challenging its installers.
Published May 7, 2006
By Adelle Caravanos
At first glance, it’s hard to decide whether the white-bricked corner that juts out of the sidewalk at Fifth Ave. and 60th St. represents the ruins of a building that has sunken into the earth, or a chunk of something alien that has dropped from the sky. Either way, Sarah Sze’s art installation, Corner Plot, is a piece that puzzles passers-by at Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza, at the southeast corner of the park. What does it mean? And more practically, how did it get there?
The simplest explanation of Corner Plot is that it is a replication of the corner of 785 Fifth Ave., the apartment building diagonally across the street from the site of the installation. The “corner” of the building appears to pierce the grey cobblestone of the sidewalk, revealing about five feet of brick facade, and allowing for a view inside an apartment on two sides. Through the window one can see evidence of life: books, a large leaf from a plant, an iPod, a microscope (did a scientist live here?). The disheveled collection implies that the inhabitant left in a hurry — but then, you would too, if your building was sinking into the ground.
The piece is built roughly to the scale of the original building — and it extends five feet into the ground, according to Anne Wehr, communications director of the Public Art Fund, which commissioned Sze’s work and has been sponsoring installations at that spot for more than 20 years.
Instructions for Installation
Sze began working on the bottom of the piece, or the “basin,” in her Manhattan studio. The basin is composed of fiberglass and aluminum, and is actually three separate pieces that Sze connected on site. Items inside are attached to surfaces with epoxy and tape.
The outer part of the installation, a fiberglass and aluminum frame covered by a white brick and mortar facade, was built under Sze’s supervision at an industrial plant in Philadelphia and shipped to New York last week.
The excavation of the plaza began on Tuesday, April 25th, but was delayed a day because the diggers came across an unexpected slab of concrete that their machines could not get through. “It wasn’t on anybody’s plans,” says Wehr, who thought that the slab was most likely the remnant of a former Public Art Fund project.
With the proper equipment, digging was resumed on Wednesday, and by the end of the day, there was a five-foot deep hole ready to accept a chunk of a building. Early Thursday morning, the basin pieces and the facade were delivered. Sze spent all day on site, joining the basin pieces and adjusting items inside the piece that had been jostled thanks to city potholes. By 9:00 pm, Corner Plot was lowered into the hole. Electricians from Con Edison spent the next day wiring and connecting the sunken apartment’s various light fixtures.
However you decide to interpret Corner Plot, Wehr says it’s easy to agree that the piece is about discovery. Stumbling onto the work can be like uncovering the ruins of an ancient city, or discovering a meteor that has fallen to Earth. “It raises questions about the relationship between man-made and natural processes,” says Wehr. And those are questions that resonate with scientists and artists alike.
Also read: Art and Science at the Academy
