A Twisted Sculpture Lands on Manhattan's High Line
The inflatable cavatappi-shaped artwork, inspired by fashion house Bulgari’s serpent motif, will remain on view through New York Fashion Week.
A pre-pasta-rous sculpture has wormed its way to Manhattan’s High Line, wedged between the park’s flora like one of Carrie Bradshaw’s ringlets from Sex and the City.
Created by Berlin-based duo Plastique Fantastique (Marco Canevacci and Yena Young), "auroBOROS—Urban Memory and Collective Dream" will remain above Little West 12th Street in the Meatpacking District through September 20, running concurrently with New York Fashion Week. The robust noodle is an abstract take on fashion house Bulgari’s enduring serpent motif, which has inspired decades’ worth of jewelry that would set the average New Yorker back a decade’s rent.
Although the installation appears to be cast in gold at first glance, a hissing sound grows louder upon closer inspection. “AuroBOROS” is a synthetic inflatable, reminiscent of a foil birthday balloon, and the noise comes from two jumbo air pumps that keep the sculpture in the taut likeness of King Midas’s large intestine.
Passersby reacted largely positively when Hyperallergic visited the artwork on Thursday afternoon, September 11, with tourists congregating to take selfies in its lustrous reflection.
"It's very interactive, and it's just a lot of fun," said Christian Guzmano, a hospitality worker who watched the days-long installation process from his office. (Mid-interview, a child hurled themselves against the sculpture and promptly ricocheted off.)
"I feel like it's reflective of the city, since you have different forces and industries interacting with each other," Guzmano added.
When standing in the center of the sculpture, a vortex of golden coils produces distorted reflections of visitors and the urban landscape, in the same spirit as Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (2006), better known as “The Bean,” in Chicago.
Unlike the exorbitant affair that is New York Fashion Week, Plastique Fantastique began with a focus on keeping costs low by using cheap materials. “AuroBOROS” — a portmanteau of “aurum,” the Latin word for Gold, and “ouroboros,” the ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent eating its own tail — marks the duo's first public art installation in the United States.
William P., a freelancer on his way to work at the US Open, echoed Guzmano's thoughts but expressed some reservations.
"It could use more color," he told Hyperallergic, after describing himself as an avid art enthusiast. “Not sure about the whole one-note thing. And I worry about it obstructing people's paths."
Unlike the pedestrian paths carved out for most temporary installations on the High Line, such as Tuan Andrew Nguyen's 27-foot-tall sculpture modeled after the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas and Ximena Garrido-Lecca's corn cob-shaped fountain that pays tribute to Indigenous cultures, "auroBOROS" takes up more than the entire width of the elevated park. The serpentine shape's nondescript head, as shiny as a balloon animal’s noggin, hangs over one railing, and its tail connects to an adjacent facade of The Standard Hotel.
Whether or not a luxury bracelet is in the budget, anyone can admire the captivating cavatappi up until Sunday. Just expect to feel a bit hungrier after your visit.
