wind blown canvas thread in NYC Park

About

Edward Shalala is a reductive abstract painter, who has been part of the New York art world for four decades. For this recent series of photographs shown in this exhibition, Shalala has traveled to the parks in all five boroughs to create an conceptual, ephemeral work.

He reduced the canvas into its parts. First he flew a kite to which raw canvas thread is attached. As the kite returns to the ground the windblown thread would form a shape on the ground and change it into a place of implied chaos.

The twelve 16 x 20 in. photographs in the exhibition is the documentation of the artist’s New York City Parks project.

Edward Shalala was born into a military family in 1949 and grew up on U.S. Army bases all over the world. He has exhibited widely in the U.S. and in Europe, and his work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Library of Congress, The Phillips Collection, The Chicago Art Institute, Art in Embassies (U.S. State Department), The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Yale University.  He is a member of American Abstract Artists.

“I travel to the parks in all five boroughs of New York City to create reductive canvas work.  Then I fly a kite to which raw canvas thread has been attached. I choose the thread’s weight based on the wind’s strength on that day. As the kite descends, the windblown thread forms a shape on the ground. I then document the shape formed by the thread with a 35mm camera and make a gelatin silver print for my record. These photographs are the only proof that these forms once existed.” - Edward Shalala 

Directions: Take 2,3,4 or 5 trains to Franklin Ave. in Brooklyn. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin, turn left into St. Johns Place. Walk ½ block to FiveMyles