Hélio Oiticica’s Major Central Park Installation Will Be Realized 51 Years Later at Queens’s Socrates Sculpture Park – ARTnews
27 April 2022
When he arrived in New York in the early 1970s, the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica dreamed of creating a large-scale outdoor public installation for the city. Situated outside a traditional arts institution, the work was meant to challenge what art could be by creating a space that would actively engage the public by inviting them to participate.
Oiticica, who died at 42 in 1980, was never able to realize this work, titled Subterranean Tropicália Projects (1971), the red-tape of New York City’s bureaucracy proving insurmountable for the acclaimed artist. He even created several scaled-down versions of the original multi-level structure in the hope that some way, somehow he might be able to accomplish the feat.
In the 40 years since his death, the work has become the stuff of legend and was a memorable inclusion in the artist’s 2016–17 traveling career retrospectives that made stops at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum in New York.
Now 51 years after its original conception the scaled-down circular iteration, PN15, will be at last realized at another New York City park, the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. The installation will be on view from May 14 to August 14, and visitors will be able to enter it on Fridays from 5–7:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Built to scale, the work marks the first major realization of an outdoor project by Oiticica in the U.S. The project is being realized in conjunction with the Americas Society on the Upper East Side and the Projeto Hélio Oiticica, the foundation established by the artist’s two brothers the year after his death. Lisson Gallery, which represents Oiticica’s estate, has also provided support.
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Hélio Oticica, Maquette for Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 Penetrable, 1971, Nylon mesh and cardboard. Photographer Miguel Rio Branco © César and Claudio Oiticica.
