Paula Hayes’s “Land Mind” provides a beautiful oasis in Midtown Manhattan (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Lever House
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through January 27
Admission: free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
www.paulahayes.com
land mind slideshow
Last winter, New York-based environmental artist and landscape designer Paula Hayes installed “Nocturne of the Limax maximus” in MoMA’s lobby, a pair of terrariums — the horizontal, biomorphic “Slug” and the vertical “Egg” — that brought colorful life to the space. This winter the Massachusetts-born Hayes, who was raised on a farm in upstate New York, has done the same in the Lever House lobby gallery just a few blocks east of MoMA with “Land Mind.” On view through January 27 in the large, glassed-in lobby, “Land Mind” consists of cast silicone and EPDM rubber planters, some in the shape of dumplings, that hold tropical trees and plants; “Slug,” which is filled with succulents; and “Aquarium,” a gorgeous 240-gallon, nearly six-foot-high cast acrylic saltwater tank that is home to such fish as Bartlett’s Anthias, Black Ocellaris Clownfish, Green Chromis, Sixline Wrasse, and Yellow Coris Wrasse, such invertebrates as Blood Red Shrimp, Cleaner Shrimp, Blue Linchia Starfish, and Banded Serpent Starfish, and such corals as Neon Green Toadstool Leather Coral, Yellow Leather Coral, and Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, surrounded by a beaded “Garden Necklace” and with a “Lighting Hood” dangling above it. Hayes has installed the ecosystem so that the working parts that keep pumping clean, fresh water and shining lights into the aquarium are visible, emphasizing the living aspects of the piece while making clear how its survival requires mechanical intervention, a delicate balance between nature and humans. “Land Mind” is an oasis in Midtown Manhattan, a charming, beautiful respite that will make you forget about the concrete and asphalt madness around you. And Lever House is the perfect place for it, as the glass building is somewhat of a terrarium itself, just filled with people instead of plants and aquatic creatures.