“Desire Lines” Tatiana Trouvé, Central Park
With spring finally in the air, take advantage of the warmer weather and go see “Desire Lines,” a fun and creative outdoor installation by Parisian sculptor, Tatiana Trouvé. It is composed of miles of colored rope wound around huge wooden spools that hold them. Commissioned by the Public Art Fund, Trouvé’s work is an homage to Central Park. If unwound, the “threads” would stretch along every inch of the 212 paths that snake through the park’s 843-acre rectangle. Many of the paths are unnamed, so Trouvé invented an “atlas” of the history and culture of walking.
Visitors to Desire Lines can choose a path by name then undertake the walk it describes. I went to visit the piece on a frosty day, when snow was still piled around the edges of the park. Without any visible signage, it was hard to appreciate just what you were seeing. Fortunately, I had a chance to visit the Park Avenue Gagosian Gallery which has a companion exhibit called, “Tatiana Trouvé: Studies for Desire Lines.
At the gallery you can see sculptures, drawings, and preparatory studies that Trouvé used for Desire Lines. In addition to vellum tracings and cast part-objects, there are detailed graphite drawings inlaid with copper and vertical maps of Central Park in raw canvas with paths hand-stitched in colored silks.
Tatiana Trouvé at the Gagosian gallery
You can see the sculpture at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza near 60th Street and Fifth Avenue until August 3oth. “Studies for Desire Lines” will be on view until April 25th.
New York Art Finds 