Gilbert Boyer, Proposal for The Garden of Babel-Leaves and Lives Because of fear of the pathways creating hiding places for criminals, Acconci lowered the height of the fencing and ivy included in his original plans” (June 6th, 1994).Īcconci’s project proposal was included in Urban Paradise: Gardens in the City, an exhibition at PaineWebber Art Gallery (4/14-). From above, the garden looks like a maze, with pathways and seating within. Chain-link fencing covered with ivy and stretched horizontally in a pattern four feet off the ground. Between two existing fenced-off viewing gardens he is creating a third. From the adjacent side fences, “chain-link is stretched across the site” ivy grows up from the existing gardens to cover it, to create “a horizontal plane of landscape, lifted up from the ground.”Įsther Iverem from Newsday described Acconci’s garden as addressing “the sense of being wrapped up in the garden. Vito Acconci, Addition to MetroTech GardensĪt MetroTech Center, a Brooklyn office complex and academic campus, Vito Acconci (b.1940, New York City, NY) created a public garden on a temporarily vacant lot between two existing chain-link fenced private gardens. Sponsored by the Public Art Fund and made possible by PaineWebber Group, Inc. The discussions and exhibits will make connections between artists and communities, and will at the same time explore the urban issues of greening, community participation and urban ecology. The objective is to create a citywide discourse on the role of artists within society and the garden as a physical design element that has been overlooked in our inner cities. The urban garden offers city dwellers an important pleasure currently lacking in our city parks while providing a new interactive experience between artist and community. It is this intimate interaction that separates the garden from the formulaic “green” spaces and vest-pocket parks designed for the inner cities. But the garden as a living organic thing demands to be taken care of therefore, it is a product of sustained labor generally, a labor of love. The garden as an object to be viewed, walked through, or otherwise passively consumed generates varying degrees of pleasure. Urban gardens, which tend to be the result of community action, represent an unusual balance between labor and pleasure. It is this visceral quality of the garden that makes it a rich area of exploration for many of today’s artists who seek to go beyond object based art-making. Urban gardens in particular offer a temporary escape from the linear, logical and planned “reality” that circumscribes the lives of most city dwellers. The project predicates the artist as a potentially significant contributor to urban planning while recognizing the historically important role artists have played in our understanding of nature and landscape.Īs a construct, the “garden” is more than simply a limited space given over to vegetation it is a spatial realm of color, shades, texture, scent, perspective and time. The project is a proactive response to the needs of the urban and social environment, offering an alternative to the historical and current experience of green spaces within the city.
Urban Paradise offers a significant development for artistic practice in the public sphere. This project creates a realm in which an artist’s vision, a community’s commitment, and the government’s cooperation yield a public amenity of an enduring nature. Public Art Fund has commissioned fourteen artists and artist-teams to design eleven gardens for New York City. U rban Paradise: Gardens in the City is a multi-site, multi-year program that explores the integration of art and urbanism through the much-neglected medium of the garden.
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