Gardens of the Future

Parks & Recreation is proud to announce the first large-scale exhibition in five years by renowned artist Dennis Oppenheim. Alternative Landscape Components: A New Land Art debuts a radical new direction in his work at multiple locations in New York City parks. The two outdoor installations and one indoor exhibition involve highly artificial, manmade landscapes of trees, hedges and flowers. Oppenheim’s structures detour from organic elements by incorporating fluorescent colors, geometric-shaped plants, hedges in aluminum mesh and trees with branches supporting silver dog houses.

The exhibition at the Arsenal Gallery features drawings and photographs of recent installations, real and imagined. Landscape Installations for Central Park, an outdoor installation in Central Park, brings the concepts alive. Garden for the Accused, a second extensive outdoor installation will appear in downtown Manhattan’s Thomas Paine Park.

The exhibition, curated by Parks & Recreation’s Public Art Coordinator Clare Weiss, will be on display from September 14 through November 8, 2006. The Arsenal Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.; closed October 9 and November 7, 2006. Admission is free.