3. Life in the Abstract at City Hall Park

parade sculpture at City Hall Park
Parade, one of the sculptures featured in Life in the Abstract. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Eva Presenhuber and Xavier Hufkens. Photo by Genevieve Hanson Photography, NYC

On June 8, Wyatt Khan’s Life in the Abstract, a series of seven monumental sculptures fabricated in Cor-Ten steel, will be unveiled at City Hall Park by the Public Art Fund. Over the course of his career, Khan has sought to examine the relationship between painting and sculpture, constructing a visual vocabulary of geometric and representational forms that mix aesthetic concerns with a fascination for quotidian objects.

Drawing on earlier practices, each sculpture in Life in the Abstract juxtaposes components from Khan’s abstract canvas paintings with “readymade” items such as eyeglasses and combs. To create the seven sculptures, 17 line drawings were welded and arranged in a specific manner to suggest imaginative narrative compositions—reflecting the artist’s own conversation between the private sphere of his life and the public realm of architecture. The sculptures will be on display until February 26, 2023.