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Hudson Yards unveils commissioned works by renowned artists Jaume Plensa, Frank Stella and Joel Shapiro

Large-scale installations are the latest additions to art and design programming in New York's "Next Great Neighborhood."

Hudson Yards, developed by Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group, today unveiled a series of monumental commissioned works by renowned artists Jaume Plensa, Frank Stella and Joel Shapiro. The pieces join a growing collection of dozens of art and design works that will be on permanent view when the new neighborhood opens on March 15th. The contemporary art program at Hudson Yards was designed to expand and enhance the cultural corridor of Manhattan’s West Side, anchored by the Whitney Museum just below 14th Street and the hundreds of galleries, museums and art spaces located throughout the Chelsea neighborhood.

The new pieces commissioned specifically for Hudson Yards include a large-scale installation entitled Voices by Jaume Plensa in 30 Hudson Yards, which comprises eleven stainless steel sculptures to enhance the building’s lobby, and two abstract structural sculptures designed by Frank Stella for 50 Hudson Yards. At Fifteen Hudson Yards, the neighborhood’s first residential building, Joel Shapiro has created a wooden, suspended sculpture for the lobby, and Helena Hernmarck has designed a tapestry entitled Flowers for the lobby of 35 Hudson Yards, the site’s mixed-use tower. Additionally, Neiman Marcus’ flagship store will contain new art acquisitions including paintings by Gene Davis and Holton Rower.

“Public spaces have been essential to my work for many years because they have this tremendous capacity to connect people not only with art, but also with the great architecture that surrounds it and with one another,” said artist Jaume Plensa. “When Stephen Ross asked me to create a new large-scale sculpture for the lobby of 30 Hudson Yards, I said yes immediately. The eleven spheres that make up Voices are composed of letters from eight different alphabets to inspire people with the idea that while we come from many places and many cultures, we are here as one community.”

“Hudson Yards is a truly unique experience because it gives artists the ability to design monumental pieces for millions of New Yorkers and visitors to enjoy every day,” said American artist Frank Stella. "The sculptures I’ve created for this new neighborhood will greet everyone coming to Manhattan’s West Side from the No. 7 Subway station and will welcome the employees of 50 Hudson Yards to their building every day. It was especially exciting to work at Hudson Yards because they share my enthusiasm for commissioning site-specific works to be shared in public spaces for the world to see.”

“I am thrilled to have one of my sculptures on display at Hudson Yards,” said artist Joel Shapiro. “After seeing Fifteen Hudson Yards, I knew that the space called for a celebratory and playful arrangement of color and form that would endlessly reconfigure as one moved in and through the space—a certain sense of spontaneity and surprise. Playing off of the elegance and refinement of materials in the lobby, I built a structure with five elements with infinite points of view that I hope is totally exciting and effervescent. I love it and can’t wait to go back and see it.”

Driven by the commitment of its founder, Stephen M. Ross, Related Companies has a storied history of infusing art and culture into its developments. In New York, Related developed High Line Nine, a gallery and exhibition space located beneath the High Line, as well as 7 gallery spaces in The Tate, a luxury residential building on West 23rd Street. Anchoring the Central Park entrance of The Shops at Columbus Circle, Related installed Fernando Botero’s Adam and Eve—two twelve foot tall bronze sculptures that greet shoppers and guests at each of the retail center’s escalators. 

“I have always been passionate about the impact art, sculpture and design can have on our lives—the memorable experiences they create and the warmth they bring to the places we live and visit,” said Stephen M. Ross, chairman of Related Companies. "These pieces enhance our everyday lives and bring vast spaces down to a human scale. At Hudson Yards, we worked with dozens of artists, designers and curators to bring to life a diverse collection for everyone to enjoy.”

Complementing the contemporary art program at Hudson Yards is Thomas Heatherwick’s Vessel, a soaring landmark and interactive experience commissioned as the centerpiece of the Public Square and Gardens at Hudson Yards. Offering a one-mile vertical climbing experience, with its 154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs and views from 80 landings, the piece temporarily known as Vessel is at the intersection of design, architecture, art and entertainment.

Enthusiasts of art and design will also be thrilled by Snark Park, a site for immersive installations housing design environments for all ages to explore, discover and enjoy. Created by New York-based design studio Snarkitecture as their first permanent exhibition space, its robust offerings will include museum-quality installations together with a strong lineup of partnership programming. The public outpost aims to make design accessible to an expansive audience by offering a platform for both creative ideation and cross-disciplinary activation. Snark Park will be located in The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards.

To the south of Hudson Yards on 28th Street, High Line Nine spotlights a unique collection of emerging gallerists in a dynamic, experimental, industry-leading format. Fans of the New York art scene will enjoy anchoring gallerist Kasmin, which is outfitted with a programmable landscaped rooftop sculpture garden, Hollis Taggart and Valli Art Gallery, among others.

30 Hudson Yards: 
Known for creating dynamic sculptures that demonstrate a keen understanding of space and volume, award-winning Spanish artist Jaume Plensa has created Voices (2018)—eleven steel orbs of varying sizes comprised of letters from eight international alphabets, suspended above the 250-square-foot lobby of 30 Hudson Yards, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Weighing between 400 and 5,000 pounds, the sandblasted steel spheres appear to float above the monumental space, sparking a dialogue on a sense of global unity and appreciation for different languages and cultures. Voices is the largest suspended piece the artist has created to date. Plensa has exhibited at galleries and museums in Europe, the United States and Asia; the artist currently has two major solo exhibitions on view now through the spring of 2019 at Palacio de Cristal-Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and at the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona. 

50 Hudson Yards: 
American artist Frank Stella is represented by two new abstract sculptural works to be installed in the lobby of 50 Hudson Yards, a commercial tower designed by Foster + Partners. Having created an extraordinary body of work over six decades, Stella now often uses digital modeling to explore how subtle changes in scale, texture, color and material can affect our experience of an object. The new, unnamed works—made of painted steel, aluminum and fiberglass—are designed to echo the elements of their environment.

Fifteen Hudson Yards: 
Joel Shapiro is an artist of international prominence. He has executed more than thirty commissions and publicly sited sculptures in major Asian, European and North American cities and has been the subject of more than 160 solo exhibitions and retrospectives internationally. In his recent investigations of the expressive possibility of form and color in space, the artist suspends painted wooden elements from the ceiling, wall and floor, exploring the projection of thought into space without the constraint of architecture. At Fifteen Hudson Yards, the residential building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group, Joel suspended five wooden elements from the lobby’s ceiling. 

10 Hudson Yards: 
Jonathan Borofsky is a contemporary American artist with more than 40 public commissions around the globe, including the 100-foot-tall Molecule Man commissioned by Allianz that stands in the middle of the Spree River in Berlin. At 10 Hudson Yards, the commercial office tower designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, Jonathan created a 30-foot long sculpture for the West Lobby wall composed of 390 interlocking figures, which—like the People Tower he created for the 2008 Beijing Olympics—comes from his Human Structures series.

35 Hudson Yards:
Swedish tapestry artist Helena Hernmarck, who lives and works in the United States and is best known for monumental works designed for architectural settings, has created Flowers for the lobby and elevator vestibule of 35 Hudson Yards, a residential tower designed by David Childs/SOM. Helena has produced large-scale tapestries for corporate settings since the late 1960s, working with architects such as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei and Partners and others. Earlier in her career, her work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her work is held in private, corporate and museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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Contacts

Polskin Arts:
Margaret Doyle
(212) 715-1660
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