At an entrance to Central Park on 60th Street and 5th Avenue, you can always count on a great art installation by the Public Art Fund. Most recently, an old-school vintage looking street clock was running backwards – a piece by Alicja Kwade installed in October 2015. Installed yesterday on the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, is Two Orchids by German artist Isa Genzken. Genzken was the subject of a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 2013.
The work here, featuring two enormous orchid flowers at 28 feet and 34 feet tall, is a commentary on the ubiquity of the once-rare and exotic flowers. The Public Art Fund describes as an “idealized, colossal version of the familiar plant: a civic monument to the perfect orchid, now the chosen ornament of contemporary culture…the mass-produced white orchid has become the quintessential flower of our age: global, accessible, and open to interpretation”
The two flowers come replete with the mass produced bands that keep the orchids growing tall, and make a nice contrast both to the naturalistic, yet also man-made landscape of Central Park, and the landmarked Plaza Hotel.
Next, check out more art installations not to miss in NYC this month.
