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Tauba Auerbach: Flow Separation
Exhibition
Tauba Auerbach: Flow Separation
1 Jul 2018 – 12 May 2019
Event times
The floating work of art is viewable from land 24 hours a day through May 12, 2019. The optimal viewing location is at the adjacent Pier 64.
** Updated locations as of August 28, 2018
- July 1 – September 23, 2018: Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier’s 6
- September 24, 2018 – May 12, 2019: Hudson River Park’s Pier 66a
New York Harbor
Address
- Hudson River Park
- Pier 66a
- New York
New York - 10011
- United States
Flow Separation is a commission by New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981, San Francisco, California), which transforms the historic Fireboat John J. Harvey into a contemporary "dazzle ship."
About
Invented by British painter Norman Wilkinson during World War I, the original dazzle patterns were painted onto ships to optically distort their forms, confusing enemy submarines tracking their distance, direction, and speed. With their geometric shapes, the dazzle designs were heavily indebted to both animal camouflage and avant-garde movements like Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism. Thousands of vessels were dazzled in the U.K. and U.S., including in New York City at the Brooklyn Navy Yards.Auerbach is known for her painterly experimentation, often playing with various techniques to explore perception and dimensionality. Her dazzle design draws inspiration from fluid dynamics and the forms found in wake patterns left behind objects as they move through water. Auerbach created her design for the surface of the boat through the process of marbling paper, floating inks on a fluid bath and combing the surface to create various wake patterns before transferring them on to paper. The fireboat also flies a flag diagramming “flow separation” — the phenomenon when areas of fluid in a wake move backwards, creating eddies. By incorporating the movement and behavior of water into the design, Auerbach references how the fireboat travels through water as well as how water moves through the belly of the vessel itself.
2018 marks one hundred years since the end of World War I. Flow Separation artfully threads together notions of innovation, technology, and abstraction, while it also invites us to remember this devastating world war.
The exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Adjunct Curator, Emma Enderby.
@PublicArtFund #FlowSeparation #DazzleShip
Flow Separation is co-commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York City’s leading presenter of dynamic outdoor art free of charge to the public, and 14-18 NOW, the United Kingdom’s arts program for the centenary of World War I. Since 2014, the London-based organization has commissioned four Dazzle Ships throughout the U.K. Auerbach’s dazzled vessel is the first U.S.-based ship and the final vessel in the series before the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on November 11, 2018.
Presenting Sponsor: Bloomberg Philanthropies
