With the New Year come and gone, however early it feels, we must also say goodbye to summer and its pleasures. This past season, one of them was Orly Genger’s massive Madison Square Park rope sculptures: Red, Yellow and Blue, which dominated the Flatiron District’s green space from May 2 through Sept. 8.
Born to Israeli parents and raised in New York, Genger, 34, is represented by the Larissa Goldston Gallery in New York and has had shows across the country. In 2003, she participated in the Haifa Second International Installation Triennale at the Haifa Museum of Art.
About three years ago, the Madison Square Park Conservancy asked her to create a work for the space; after observing it, Genger decided she wanted to try to give people a reason to linger there instead of just moving through on their way to home and work.
She had worked before with rope and public installations, but decided to attempt something on a much bigger scale. The result is three undulating structures made of 1.4 million feet of recycled nautical rope. She worked with a team of assistants in her Brooklyn studio for two and a half years knotting the rope into the form she used to build the pieces in the park.
“It’s been great to show my work in the city in which I was born and raised,” Genger told the Jewish Week via e-mail. “From an early age, New York’s museums, galleries and parks have been an integral part of my life and home and have helped inspire me to become an artist. It is a city bursting with art.”
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