Rockaway! Katharina Grosse

Until November 2016, MoMA PS1 is showcasing the site-specific installation by German artist Katharine Grosse for Rockaway! 2016, in Long Island, New York. The condemned aquatics building on the beach in Fort Tilden has been turned into a sublime piece of art for visitors to appreciate.



Rockaway! 2016 is a continuation of MoMA PS1's ongoing collaborative programming alongside the Rockaway Artists Alliance, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, National Park Service, Central Park Conservancy, NYC Parks & Recreation and the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.





This collaboration began with the VW Dome 2, erected in 2013 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 that devastated the “Rockaway Peninsula” on Long Island, in the New York City borough of Queens. Through the years it has featured solo projects by Patti Smith, Adrián Villar Rojas and Janet Cardiff (http://www.livegreenblog.com/events/rockaway-the-new-york-arts-festival-for-post-sandy-recovery-9633/) to aid recovery from the devastating damage caused by Sandy in this coastal location that has been a very popular summer resort area since the 1830s.





This year, MoMA PS1 engaged German artist Katharine Grosse to create a temporary site-specific installation in Gateway National Recreation Area, Fort Tilden. Here the artist has used a specialized technique of spraying brightly coloured paint directly onto the structure to turn Fort Tilden's decaying - and condemned - aquatics building into an artwork, blending building, nature and art into a single whole that completely envelops visitors, and which is also obvious in the pictures taken by Spanish architecture photographer Montse Zamorano.





Katharine Grosse's art brings together the features of landscape painting with the majestics of a monumental sculpture. An  open dialogue between art and artefact where the beach environment forms both a magnificent backdrop for Grosse’s colours and reminds us of how manmade structures will never win the fight against the forces of nature.

Christiane Bürklein

Rockaway! 2016
http://momaps1.org/exhibitions/view/410
Long Island, New York, USA
Images: see key - © Montse Zamorano (courtesy of the artist) - © Pablo Enriquez (courtesy of MoMA PS1)