10. Spring Exhibitions on the High Line

Public art installation on the High Line
Baseera Khan, Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High) (rendering). Courtesy of the artist and High Line Art.

This Spring, the High Line will host three new public art installations. In April, Yu Ji’s Column-Untitled No.3, 2023 was unveiled. This piece, located at 20th Street, is made of “two twisting columns whose design reflects magnified images of the Equisetum—an over 100 million-year-old family of ferns—growing in the park.” Ji was inspired by the images of early 20th-century photographer Karl Blossfeldt, who shot detailed black-and-white photographs of plants. Ji also references architectural botanical ornamentation by early 19th-century German theologian Moritz Meurer.

Debuting this may is Gabriel Chail‘s the wind blows where it wishes. For the High Line, the Portuguese artist created a large adobe sculpture that will stand at 24th Street. Chail pulled inspiration from sources like Leonardo da Vinci’s nature drawings, Biblical passages about the wind, representations of natural phenomena in art history, and his own observations of pre-Columbian archeological ceramics from northwest Argentina. Like JI’s sculpture which interacts with the park’s plants, this structure will be impacted by the natural forces of the High Line. It will be on view through April 2024.