High Line Art

The High Line's 18th Street Billboard—whose original incarnation was decommissioned almost ten years ago—is relaunching once again as a platform for art in September 2024 with a timely new work by Glenn Ligon.

Ligon’s "Untitled (America/Me)" will be the first artwork to grace the newly reconstructed billboard adjacent to the High Line at 18th Street near 10th Avenue. On view from September 3 through November 2024, Ligon’s presentation inaugurates this new iteration of an iconic billboard that once stood in this same location at the gateway to the gallery district.

“It’s a giant canvas for artists to present large scale works visible both from the High Line and from the street level," shared High Line Art director and chief curator, Cecilia Alemani. "The cutting message of 'Untitled (America/Me)' finds renewed resonance in the current political moment.”

Read the full piece in ArtNews to learn more about the return of the 18th Street Billboard and plan your trip to see Glenn Ligon's "Untitled (America/Me)" on the High Line soon: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/high-line-art-relaunches-its-18th-street-billboard-commission-with-a-glenn-ligon-work-1234715839/

For the High Line, Teresa Solar-Abboud () presents “Birth of Islands,” a new sculpture in her series of zoomorphic shapes inspired by animals and prehistoric life forms. “Birth of Islands” is composed of slick, blade-like foam-coated resin elements that emanate outward from the pores of a muddy, gray ceramic stump.

When visiting New York, Solar-Abboud was struck by the landscape—building after building rising from the soil in a fight for prominence, just as vegetation in the forest combats for sunlight in order to survive. “Birth of Islands” refers to this competitive ecosystem, while also evoking human anatomy: two yellow, tongue-like emanations have seemingly tunneled their way from underground onto the High Line. The forms are spoon-like in their appearance, concave or convex, depending on one’s vantage point. The result appears simultaneously post-human and primordial, sophisticated and elementary—a representation of our own unending transformation alongside nature’s ever-evolving state.

📍: On the High Line at 20th Street

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For the High Line, Teresa Solar-Abboud presents "Birth of Islands," a new sculpture in her series of zoomorphic shapes inspired by animals and prehistoric life forms. "Birth of Islands" is composed of slick, blade-like foam-coated resin elements that emanate outward from the pores of a muddy, gray ceramic stump.

When visiting New York, Solar-Abboud was struck by the landscape—building after building rising from the soil in a fight for prominence, just as vegetation in the forest combats for sunlight in order to survive. "Birth of Islands" refers to this competitive ecosystem, while also evoking human anatomy: two yellow, tongue-like emanations have seemingly tunneled their way from underground onto the High Line. The forms are spoon-like in their appearance, concave or convex, depending on one’s vantage point. The result appears simultaneously post-human and primordial, sophisticated and elementary—a representation of our own unending transformation alongside nature’s ever-evolving state.

📍: On the High Line at 20th Street
📸: Photos by Liz Devine

Giulia Cenci—the artist behind "secondary forest," on the High Line at 24th St.—recently offered artnet and its readers a deeper dive into her artwork, how the structure and history of the High Line inspired its creation, and an inside look at her studio in Tuscany.

Of her inspiration and the way her artwork has integrated into the park, Cenci said, "The High Line is a beautiful work itself; I immediately loved the way nature has been growing and devouring a manmade infrastructure. Placed on several levels, the structures let the actual nature of the High Line grow and mix with an aluminum entity presenting vegetal, animal, and human prototypes melting and growing underneath, creating a new weird entity or landscape."

Read the full piece in Artnet and plan your next trip to the High Line to see "secondary forest": news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-giulia-cencis-spectral-forms-2520326

Gifts from people like you — whose donations fund almost 100% of the programming and maintenance of the park — help bring extraordinary artworks like "secondary forest" to the High Line. You can visit https://www.thehighline.org/donate to make a donation or join as a member today.

Along the High Line's wildest expanse, the Western Rail Yards, we are proud to present Oliver Lee Jackson's A Journey—a series of five massive new steel sculptures.

As we celebrate the High Line's 15th year, this stretch of the park, which runs between 30th and 34th Streets and west of 11th Avenue, offers visitors a glimpse of what the High Line was like before it was transformed into the public treasure it is today: a self-seeded landscape with sprawling views of the Hudson River and iconic views into the city's center. Installed in June, Oliver Lee Jackson's expressive works—with their abstract forms and vivid colors—complement and contrast with the untamed landscape and simple path of this section of the park, creating a new way to experience this space.

Stop by to see the exhibition and you'll see why we're fighting to and the unique magic of the Western Rail Yards. Learn more about the artwork and our Protect the High Line campaign: protect.thehighline.org/

📸 : Timothy Schenck

Got a secret? We can keep it—we swear. 🤫

Join us on Saturday, August 17, for "Tree Hole (your secret is safe with me)," a performance-based public program by Chang Yuchen in dialogue with Pamela Rosenkranz’s Plinth commission, "Old Tree," 2023. Inspired by the medieval Irish folktale, "The Emperor's Donkey Ears," Yuchen will perform as a ‘tree hole,’ inviting visitors to share their secrets, which she promises to keep safe. Like a tree, Yuchen will be mostly silent, offering responses such as eye contact or advice only upon request.

📆 August 17 | 3 – 6pm
📍 On the High Line at the Spur on 30th Street and 10th Avenue
🎟️ FREE | No RSVP required

To learn more about Chang Yuchen and this program, visit the link in our profile. Save the date and your secrets for this August!

Now on the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard: American Vignettes by María Magdalena Campos-Pons. 🌓

For the High Line, Campos-Pons presents American Vignettes, a two-sided billboard featuring paintings that have been pieced together and arranged into a grid-like presentation. She refers to American Vignettes as a sort of visual diary of daily life and survival in the city, “removed from the immediacy of quick snapshots.”

Campos-Pons invites viewers to engage with her reflections on the tensions and continued rhythm between humans and nature at a massive scale, transforming the deeply personal into a meditation that resonates beyond the confines of specific cultural or geographical spaces. We encourage you to take in this spectacular work and its universal relevance, and we hope you enjoy exploring this piece's cross cultural and cross generational themes.🌇 🌿

📍: On Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets
🌇: thehighline.org/art/projects/campos-pons/

📍: Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets

Time is running out to view Tschabalala Self's () “Loosie in the Park” (2019) and “Patience” (2022) on the High Line. Stop by the Moynihan Connector Billboard before July 30 for your last chance to see these works. ✨

Through a fusion of painting, printmaking, assemblage, and sculpture, Self highlights the tension between foreground and background, distorting traditional expectations of space, shape, and form. This distortion speaks to the nuanced complexity of Black femininity, mimicking stereotypical and exaggerated depictions of a gendered and racialized body.

Artwork courtesy of the artist, Pilar Corrias, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

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Proposal Spotlight: Gala Porras-Kim

Gala Porras-Kim is a Colombian artist in Los Angeles, California. “Future spaces replicate earlier spaces” is a sculpture based on a Strombus conch which was often used throughout global antiquity as an instrument in rituals and as a decorative object. The exterior of the sculpture is pearlescent and marked with etchings inspired by traditional Mayan conch carving, and the work is propped vertically on a base made with shell stone. The work will play music made from the sounds of an 18,000-year-old conch instrument. On view at the Spur, “Future spaces replicate earlier spaces” considers the history of the nearby ports and connects our contemporary moment to an ancient, cyclical past.

💬 Share your thoughts on “Future spaces replicate earlier spaces” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.

📸: Renderings courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Conch-shell trumpet, Maya circa 4th–6th century, image via The Met
📸: “931 offerings for the rain” photo by Paul Salveson
📸: “La Mojarra Stela” photo by Ron Amstutz

Proposal Spotlight: Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Tuan Andrew Nguyen is a Vietnamese artist living in Ho Chi Minh City. “The Light that Shines Through the Universe” is a 30-foot-tall sandstone homage to the Bamiyan Buddhas, two 6th-century monumental statues in central Afghanistan that were destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban. Nguyen symbolically casts the Buddha’s hands, missing from the original monuments long before their final destruction, from brass artillery shells. They are arranged in mudras—or ritual gestures—that express fearlessness in compassion. The work’s title is a direct reference to the nickname used by local communities for the larger of the two Buddhas: “Salsal,” which means “the light shines through the universe.” This broken, rebuilt, resilient figure suggests the use of memory and the concept of reincarnation as a tool for renewal and healing.

Please note that the maquette is made out of gray sandstone and the final Plinth proposal would be made from yellow sandstone, as represented in the rendering.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “The Light that Shines Through the Universe” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.

📸: Renderings courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Bamiyan Buddha image via De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images
📸: Other images courtesy of the artist

Proposal Spotlight: Emeka Ogboh

Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian artist living in Lagos and Berlin. The ijele is a revered emblem among the Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria. The nearly 15-foot-tall, intricately crafted mask is carried in masquerade performances on special occasions and features colorful depictions of humans, animals, and spiritual motifs. Ogboh’s “Ijele 2.0” updates this tradition, incorporating modern-day representations to exemplify the adaptability and relevance of this cultural practice. The work is adorned with puppet-like effigies of various 21st-century figures—Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Pope Francis, Elon Musk, and Vladimir Putin, among others. Ogboh also revised the original banners to include contemporary symbols referring to cryptocurrency, global protest, the COVID-19 virus, climate change, and artificial intelligence. Ijele 2.0 explores how collective memories and histories can be translated, transformed, and encoded into different contexts.

💬 Share your thoughts on “Ijele 2.0” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.

📸: Renderings courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck

ICYMI: JJJJJerome Ellis shared a stunning sonic experience for the people and plants of the High Line the past two nights at "Music for the Garden." 🌱🎷 These performances left our visitors with a warmth and sense of gratitude, aptly located adjacent to Lily van der Stokker's mural, "Thank You Darling."

These performances included a combination of live saxophone and electronic sound. Ellis views this as a musical intervention for both the people and the plants on the High Line. The artist worked with the High Line horticulture team to learn about the various plants growing by the Lawn, and incorporated this research into their musical performance—as JJJJJerome paced around the garden with their saxophone, they named and discussed the various species. "Music for the Garden" was as much about creating music for the site and the human audience, as it was creating music for the flower and plant audience.
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Tonight, for the second work of this two-part performance, catch "Celebrating Stuttering Voices" on the High Line at Gansevoort Street. This performance will feature readings and conversation by both the artist and their four collaborators from the People Who Stutter Create (PWSC) collective—Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, Conor Foran, and Kristel Kubart—interspersed with occasional musical interludes by Ellis.

As a backdrop to tonight's performance tonight, guests will experience the PWSC collective's billboard across the block on Gansevoort Street. This work, "People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time" is part of the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, on view now through August 11.

📸: Liz Ligon

Proposal Spotlight: Candice Lin

Candice Lin is an American artist living in Los Angeles. For the High Line Plinth, Lin proposes “Cat-Demon Protector”—a 13-foot-tall, colorfully painted, aluminum sculpture of a “cat-demon.”

The cat stands in a traditional pose from qigong, an ancient Chinese practice of coordinated movements and breathwork that encourages good health and spirituality. Additionally, the titular cat-demon’s head is mechanized to rotate 360 degrees at the top of every hour—resembling an Exorcist-like cuckoo clock.

The work will be complemented by an AR component that engages viewers with an animation of “Cat-Demon Protector” teaching qigong. Similar instructions would also be etched into the aluminum-cladded plinth. These elements encourage viewers to slow down; Lin views the passage of time and the bodies moving in unison through qigong flow as core to the work—becoming a form of living public sculpture.

💬 Share your thoughts on “Cat-Demon Protector” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.

📸: Renderings courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Candice Lin, “Lithium S*x Demons in the Factory,” 2023. Courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly Gallery. Image courtesy Canal Projects. Photo: Izzy Leung.

Join us on the High Line this Thursday for a talk with artist Chloe Wise!

📆 Thursday, June 6, 6:30 – 8pm
📍 On the High Line at 14th Street
🎟️ FREE | RSVP: https://bit.ly/4e9Cb3a

Chloe Wise's solo exhibition, "But Wait, There’s More!," is currently playing on the High Line Channel. The exhibition replicates the sensation of channel surfing at the mercy of some unknown remote control holder.

In conversation with curator and creative producer Vic Brooks, Wise will discuss her films, as they present a poignant critique of the commercialism that permeates every facet of our lives.

If you haven't had a chance to catch the exhibition yet, come early to experience "But Wait, There’s More!" at 5pm.

📸: Rendering, with photo by Timothy Schenck

Proposal Spotlight: Mire Lee

Mire Lee is a Korean artist living in Amsterdam. “The Leaking Machine” resembles a metallic silver chandelier or a dreamcatcher topped with multiple “ribs” that hold water hoses that endlessly leak. Several “rain chains” are hung from the leakage points of the hoses, covered with palm-sized objects gathered from the surrounding community.

To create this piece, Lee imagines hosting an open call where individuals can donate light-reflective materials, such as aluminum cans, metal wires, and glass. Participants are also encouraged to put their energy and spirit into the objects, wishing for the health and vitality of their loved ones.

“The Leaking Machine” is inspired by artist Emery Blagdon’s work, The Healing Machine (1955 – 1986), a composition of handmade objects intended to channel the healing powers of the earth.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “The Leaking Machine” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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📸: Rendering and photos courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Mire Lee, “We, on the Rising Wave,” 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
📸: Mire Lee, “Endless House: Holes and Drips,” 2022. Image courtesy of the artist and Venice Biennale. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano.

Proposal Spotlight: Camille Henrot

Camille Henrot is a French artist based in New York City. For her High Line Plinth proposal, Henrot presents “You Were Found”—a larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a barn owl. Traditionally, the barn owl is associated with keen observation, intelligence, and witchcraft and magic, symbolizing the afterlife. Though nocturnal and rarely seen, the owl at the Spur makes itself known—taking a rest from flight on the Plinth. One of its legs is wounded, replaced with a wooden peg. Its tail unfurls into a scroll—the top sheet of paper in a stack of pages that come to form its perch, the pedestal. The work’s title suggests a simultaneous resistance to perception and control, alongside a desire to be seen. Has the owl found its prey, or have you found her? Are we bird-watching, or do the birds watch us? Henrot’s sculpture is a meditation on seeing and being seen, highlighting the idea that observation is an innately active posture.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “You Were Found” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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📸: Rendering and photos courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Mennour.
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Barn owl reference photo via on Instagram
📸: Photos of previous work: Exhibition view, Middelheim Museum, "Wet Job", 2022. Photos by Ans Brys.

Proposal Spotlight: Rachel Feinstein

Rachel Feinstein is an artist living in New York City. For her shortlisted Plinth proposal, “Castle on the Rock” recalls romantic imagery from Renaissance paintings depicting a distant castle on a hill, a beacon surrounded by nature. Feinstein considers the emotions this sight might have inspired in weary travelers, viewing the Spur as a new site of rest and respite for those in New York City. The 18-foot-tall sculpture, inspired by medieval-style architectural Jewish marriage rings, is made completely out of carved green jasper from Brazil, and features a road, castle, and inner ring in polished brass. Visitors will be able to sit in the work’s carved-out center, encouraging direct engagement with the sculpture.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “Castle on the Rock” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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📸: Rendering, studio process, and quarry photos courtesy of the artist
📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Jewish wedding ring photo via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Proposal Spotlight: Abraham Cruzvillegas

Abraham Cruzvillegas is an artist based in Mexico City. For his High Line Plinth proposal, Cruzvillegas presents “Untitled Pupa”—a work that represents the chrysalis of a monarch butterfly and a milkweed branch.

The mostly green sculpture stands on a matte pink painted plinth, producing a contrast in color, texture, and brightness. Both the chrysalis and the branch are designed to be representative of their real-life counterparts, producing another contrast with the urban landscape. Monarch butterflies travel annually from their sanctuary in Michoacán, in the West of Mexico, the land of some of the artist’s family ancestors, to the US and Canada, passing through New York City. Cruzvillegas introduces the monarch and its home as a metaphor for migration and travel not only of animals and plants, but also of human beings around the globe, and the challenging circumstances found along these often urgently necessary pathways.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “Untitled Pupa” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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[1 – 3] Rendering courtesy of the artist
[4] Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
[5] Sculpture texture, photo courtesy of the artist
[6] Map of monarch migration, via Biodiversidad Mexicana
[7] Map of human migration, via El Economista
[8] Homero Gómez González, via El País
[9] Monarch and milkweed on the High Line, bottom photo by Liz Ligon

Proposal Spotlight: Sammy Baloji

Sammy Baloji is an artist based in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Brussels, Belgium. For his High Line Plinth proposal, he presents “Listen Closely: You’ll Hear Their Feet Beating Out And Beating Out”—an oversized horn that references the musical histories of the American South.

In the 1730s, “free mulattos, blacks, and Native Americans” were required to serve in the military, but as drummers and trumpeters, forbidden to bear arms due to fears of uprisings. These instruments came to symbolize community and solidarity, making music, rather than weapons, a tool for resistance. By the early 19th century, New Orleans’ Congo Square had become the locus for these traditions—hundreds of enslaved Africans would gather weekly to relax and play music, which eventually led to the creation of New Orleans jazz and rhythm and blues.

The work sits atop a pedestal that resembles a mound of sugar, a nod to the colonization of the Caribbean, and the horn’s surface is embossed with marks that refer to Congolese traditions of body scarification. With this work, Baloji provides a thought-provoking meditation on the interconnection of global, social, and racial histories.

Please note that the maquette is a slightly more reddish copper tone than the proposal. The color reflected in the rendering is more true to the final Plinth proposal.
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💬 Share your thoughts on Listen Closely: You'll Hear Their Feet Beating Out And Beating Out” below!

This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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[1] Rendering courtesy of the artist
[2 – 3] Maquette photo by
[4] Sketch courtesy of the artist
[5] Painting of the Battle of San Domingo by Janvier Suchodolski (1845)
[6 – 7] Background images courtesy of the artist
[8 – 10] Photos of “Johari - Brass Band” and Grand Palais by Didier Plowy Merci, courtesy of the artist

Up next on the High Line Channel: "But Wait, There's More!" 📺

Chloe Wise's solo exhibition, "But Wait, There’s More!" replicates the sensation of channel surfing at the mercy of some unknown remote control holder. Two new films, "Ingredients" (2024, 1 min.) and "Priorities" (2024, 2 min.) are joined by "Told a Vision" (2023, 15 min.), which features fragments of commercials with uncanny similarities to those found on cable television, though the audience is never able to grasp what exactly is being sold. “No problems, just savings!” one commercial states. “Call now!” asserts another. “Side effects may include experiences,” a pharmaceutical spoof cautions. Brought together, Wise’s films present a poignant critique of postmodern consumer culture and the fallacy that consumption can provide fulfillment or happiness. In each broken scene, the audience is advised and spoken to directly, but even the figures on screen take care to remind us repeatedly, “I do not know you.”

📆 May 7 – July 8, beginning at 5pm daily
📍 On the High Line at 14th Street

📽️: Video still of "Ingredients," courtesy of the artist
📸: Rendering, photo by Timothy Schenck

Scenes from Matty Davis' "Die No Die (The High Line)," a performance co-commissioned by High Line Art and Frieze .

If you haven't caught it yet, tonight's your last chance to experience this intense and inventive performance. Advance registration is sold out, but walk-ups are welcome if the event isn't at capacity. Visit https://bit.ly/3WoGKjp to learn more.

Meet us on the High Line at Gansevoort Street tonight, May 2 at 5pm.

📸: Liz Ligon

Last chances to catch "Bedtime Stories" on the High Line Channel! 📺

Resuming tomorrow through May 6, starting daily at 5pm
📍 On the High Line at 14th Street

Visit https://bit.ly/4c03b3Q to learn more about these works.

Proposal Spotlight: Natalie Ball

Natalie Ball is an Oregon-based contemporary artist. Her proposal, “KISS THE KOPTU” represents the koptu and c’waam, two sacred suckerfish that have existed for millions of years and are endemic to the Upper Klamath Basin on the Klamath Tribes territory in Oregon. With this piece, Ball is attempting to counter a non-tribal narrative that devalues them as “trash fish” in order to legitimize unsustainable agriculture. The work carries the tribes’ kinship design to celebrate tribal sovereignty and the community who continue to love and protect the fish relatives. “KISS THE KOPTU” encourages viewers to playfully engage and learn as they witness the sacred fish being honored through scale, color, and gesture, as the people of the Klamath Tribes continue to fight for their existence.

You may also recognize Ball from her recent exhibit, “bilwi naats Ga’niipci,” at the Whitney Museum on view from November 2023 – February 2024.

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💬 Share your thoughts on “KISS THE KOPTU” below!
This is one of the 12 shortlisted proposals for our fifth and sixth commissions. Visit https://bit.ly/3xu3JPZ to share your feedback and learn more about these proposals.
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📸: Maquette photo by Timothy Schenck
📸: Rendering and photos of past work courtesy of the artist
📸: Koptu image courtesy of Klamath Tribe Water Research Lab
📸: Klamath map courtesy of The Quartux Journal
📸: “bilwi naats Ga’niipci” exhibit photos courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art

We're excited to share the next two works on view on the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard: "Patience" (2022) and "Loosie in the Park" (2019) by Tschabalala Self.

Visit https://bit.ly/4b1gvUg to learn more.

Our time with Baseera Khan's "Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High)" is soon coming to an end. View this work on the High Line at Little West 12th Street before it comes down at the beginning of May.

"Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High)" is Baseera Khan’s monument to the ecosystem of labor and people around the world who make the High Line possible. The artwork is an archway of tablets inscribed with packaging labels and jotted notes of High Line staff members, who Khan interviewed to create the piece.

Visit https://bit.ly/43CLN0G to learn more about Khan and this piece.

Baseera Khan, "Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High)," 2023.

📸: Timothy Schenck

This week is your last chance to view these two colorful works by Derrick Adams on the Connector Billboard! Swing by to see “Sitting Pretty” (2016) and “Sing It Like You Mean It” (2016) at Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets.

These works explore the ways in which Black personalities have been depicted on TV as overly dramatized, larger-than-life, and exaggerated, particularly between the 1970s and 1990s. These works evoke imagery of the color TVs of the 70s and 80s, from their vintage wood-grain finish frames to the test patterns that would calibrate the screens’ color balance.

Derrick Adams, "Sitting Pretty," 2016.
Derrick Adams, "Sing It Like You Mean It," 2016.

Derrick Adams artworks courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.

📸: Timothy Schenck