John Chamberlain, “The Hedge,” painted and chromium-plated steel, sixteen elements, 1997 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Lever House Art Collection
390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Through August 31, free
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
the hedge photo set
Indiana-born sculptor John Chamberlain has seemingly been omnipresent since his death in December 2011 at the age of eighty-four. Sadly, the longtime Shelter Island resident passed away shortly before his wonderful career retrospective, “Choices,” last year at the Guggenheim, which showed off the surprising breadth of his work, which went well beyond car chrome and steel assemblages. Then the Gagosian put together a small outdoor sculpture installation on Seagram Plaza in Midtown last summer and fall, allowing such recent biomorphic aluminum pieces as “FROSTYDICKFANTASY,” “MERMAIDSMISCHIEF,” and “ROBUSTFAGOTTO” to glitter in the sun. Now Lever House is presenting one of Chamberlain’s largest sculptures, 1997’s “The Hedge,” which consists of a forty-six-foot-long row of sixteen evenly spaced forty-four-inch-high squares composed of painted chromium-plated steel from automobiles. A kind of three-dimensional Abstract Expressionist canvas come to life, “The Hedge” cuts through the mostly black-and-gray glassed-in Lever House lobby, where it can be seen residing next to a row of live green plantings. Each piece has a square hole in the middle, allowing visitors to look through them all, directly out onto Park Ave., where more colors pass by with the traffic, adding sly commentary on America’s consumerist car culture. Using such tools as a sledgehammer, a compactor, an acetylene torch, a band saw, and a steel cutter on automobile parts, Chamberlain is able to evoke the natural world with “The Hedge,” which features an array of bright, bold colors in a unique kind of metallic topiary. Each piece is a work of art in its own right, but together they invite viewers into a multifaceted, multidimensional space that seems to morph as seen from different angles.