American sculptor Martin Puryear’s – Big Bling. Forty-foot high, temporary multi-tier structure at Madison Square Park, New York. The temporary outdoor work, part of the free contemporary art program is a multi-tier wood structure wrapped in fine chain-link fence with a gold-leafed shackle anchored near the top of the structure (referring to the ‘bling’ in the piece’s title). It is part animal form, part abstract sculpture, and part intellectual meditation.
Martin Puryear (American, b. 1941), an American sculptor typically creates handmade artworks using methods from carpentry, boat building, and other trades. Wood, his signature material, is employed in his Madison Square Park project to anchor the physicality of the tremendous sculpture with the chain-link fence. In 2007 Martin Puryear’s retrospective was organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York and traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. An exhibition of his drawings, Martin Puryear: Multiple Dimensions, will be on view at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum.
Madison Square Park’s 6.2-acre site attracts more than 50,000 diverse visitors daily. Not only is it a source of a wide array of free public art, it also showcases food and musical events throughout the years. It is an oasis in the Flatiron area of NYC.
