On January 31st, construction scaffolding and barriers were disassembled from the site at 56 Leonard Street, revealing Anish Kapoor’s first permanent artwork in New York City. The 48-foot-long, 19-foot-tall, 40-ton sculpture is nestled partially beneath the Herzog & de Meuron-designed residential building in the Tribeca neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. The mirrored sculpture is reminiscent of Kapoor;’s work called Cloud Gate, also known as “The Bean,” in Chicago, US.
The balloon-like artwork sits on the pavement at the base of the tower, seemingly squeezed under one of its cantilevered apartments. This interaction with the building infuses a sense of movement into the artwork, creating an “unprecedented collaboration between sculpture and architecture,” according to the developers.
The building at 56 Leonard Street, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Hill West Architects, presents the image of stacked individual housing units, earning its nickname the “Jenga Tower.” The tower is made with shifting floor slabs that create cantilevers and balconies and multiply the spaces available for the residents. The variation in shape aims to give the tower an individual and intimate character, despite its size. The base of the building is designed to respond to the identity of the Tribeca area by varying the size of the units and reflecting the different neighborhood scales.
As developer Alexico Group has said, Kapoor’s sculpture seems to both prop up the building and be squashed by it. Commissioned in 2008, economic slowdown, covid-related travel restrictions, and technical difficulties have delayed the construction efforts. The yet-to-be-titled work has quickly become a favorite selfie spot for the art-lovers in Tribeca, now on of New York City’s main gallery districts.
The city can feel frenetic, fast, and hard, imposing architecture, concrete, noise. My work, at 56 Leonard Street, proposes a form that though made of stainless steel is also soft and ephemeral. Mirrors cause us to pause, to be absorbed and pulled in a way that disrupts time, slows it down perhaps; it's a material that creates a new kind of immaterial space. - Anish Kapoor
Public art plays an important role in shaping the identity of cities by engaging freely with audiences outside of museums and in the public realm. In 2017, a new exhibition by Ai Weiwei presented in Washington Square Park, Manhattan, explored the idea of security fences as a medium for public intervention, examining the tension and contradictions surrounding borders and those excluded by them. In the 12th edition of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, MODU presented the Heart Squared installation, a public artwork dedicated to love and diversity.
