The People's Playground
June 19, 2008- July 31, 2008
Reception: June 19, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
550 W 21st St
New York, NY, May 17th, 2008 -
Yvon Lambert New York is pleased to announce its first exhibition of NewYork based artist
Michael Brown (born 1982, Poughkeepsie, New York). The People s Playground will be installed in the front gallery at 550 West 21st Street.
The title of the piece, The People s Playground, is the name by which Coney Island, since it s inception in
the early 1800 s, has been known. Coney Island is the small peninsula that hangs from the southern most
edge of Brooklyn. Its history has been intrinsically shaped by the immigrants and urban Americans who
gathered there, creating their own forms of enjoyment and spectacle, developing into a tourist destination
after the civil war.
In The People s Playground,
Michael Brown will present a large aluminum cast of a portion of the beach
from Coney Island. Brown has been drawn to reproducing simple objects and gestures in minimal, distilled
form throughout his artistic practice. His work is often engaged with political subjects represented by
everyday objects.
The People s Playground captures a community in flux. The utopian promise of Coney Island, a public space
where many people of different means mix, is threatened. Brown s minimal sculpture signals the
encroaching displacement of the diverse, lively culture, a public space soon to be eradicated by private
interests. The piece preserves a transient impression in time in its physiological entirety, the dint of fading
footprints and debris in the sand. A simple, banal, repetitive moment is stripped of its cyclical function and
value, frozen in the moment. Replicating the human passage through time, intrinsic to this preserved
moment is our understanding that the possibility of future impressions does not exist. We will not have the
option to partake in the rich history of the People s Playground. In revealing a history that the on looker may
never be a part of, Brown s work unveils more generally the existence of socio-economic tensions between
public and private interest.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | map | | Gallery | Yvon Lambert Gallery | | Address | 550 W 21st St New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States | | Phone | 212-242-3611 | | Fax | 212-242-3920 | | Hours | Tue-Sat 10-6 | |
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