A New Cityscape Rises in Madison Square Park
Artist Leonardo Drew just installed a monumental new piece at the iconic Madison Square Park, mere blocks away from the NoMad condominiums at 88 & 90 Lex. This sprawling interactive installation, titled City in the Grass, invites visitors to engage with physical space and question their own place in the urban fabric.
Leonardo Drew
Drew was born in Florida and lived most of his life in Bridgeport, CT, before attending Parsons School of Design and completing a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He has been a New Yorker since graduating, and currently lives in Brooklyn. Drew makes large sculptures that explore texture and shape, often taking the form of massive layered edifices that force the viewer to step back and appreciate the whole before diving into the details.
City in the Grass
When tasked with creating his installation at Madison Square Park, Drew decided to look at the project as an opportunity to create his own tiny version of New York City. The result is part topographic model, part map, and part sculpture, where tiny wood block skyscrapers live in the melting shadow of massive organic-looking towers. At over 100 feet long, City in the Grass takes up most of the park’s Oval Lawn, and visitors are invited to walk around the piece and discover its many intimate facets for themselves.
The Passage of Time and People
Brooke Kamin Rapaport, deputy director and senior curator of Mad. Sq. Art at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, told the New York Times that cities like ours “can be places of great inspiration but also great denigration, and that complexity is in this project.” In fact, the denigration of the piece itself was planned by Drew, who looks forward to City in the Grass being eroded and changed by visitors as well as the weather itself. “I would love it to take abuse because my work really is about a weathered history of our journey on this planet,” Drew explained in the New York Times article. “The piece is going to find itself in a whole other level of loveliness if it’s allowed to live.”
The accessibility of nearby studios, galleries, and exhibitions, such as City in the Grass, certainly provides the ideal backdrop for the art aficionado living in NoMad. And within each residence at 88 & 90 Lex, the graciously-scaled living areas are accented with intentional design features, such as gallery-inspired art walls, allowing one to design an entire room around a piece of art.
If you’re looking to give your new home a character of its own, visit our availabilities page or on-site sales gallery today at 88 & 90 Lex.
