COURTESY THE ARTIST AND JOHAN BERGGREN GALLERY
Spring is still months away, but already New York’s High Line is anticipating a wave of parkgoers—some with art on their minds—spending more time outside. With a focus on work that mashes together notions of humans, technology, and nature, High Line Art’s annual group show—this year with the title “Mutations“—will open in April, with outdoor work by 12 emerging artists. Walking along the High Line, viewers can expect to see a “speculative food chain” courtesy of Jon Rafman and a juice-spurting fountain by Veit Laurent Kurz, among other oddities.
Viewers will also be able to see new and recent works by Larry Bamburg, Alisa Baremboym, Sascha Braunig, Dora Budor, Radames Juni Figueroa, Guan Xiao, Marguerite Humeau, Joanna Malinowska, Jumana Manna, and Max Hooper Schneider. Some of the works will be high-tech—Budor is planning a weather-responsive work based on the architecture firm Archigram’s designs. Others, like Manna’s abstracted sculpture of a hand, will feature more everyday subject matter.
And then there will be especially strange ones. Schneider is planning a reef partially made out of human hair, while Humeau is creating a winged sphinx that the London-based sculptor says can ward off enemies. Braunig will also pick up on that fantastical impulse by creating oversized and sharpened boots that will be presented in a patch of plants.
Complete descriptions of each work in the show are available on High Line Art’s website. “Mutations” is currently slated to run from April through March 2018.