Harold Ancart Public Art Fund Commission: Subliminal Standard

New York’s Public Art Fund has unveiled Subliminal Standard, a newly commissioned installation by Harold Ancart. #subliminalstandard

In response to the Public Art Fund’s mission to bring dynamic contemporary art to a broad audience in the city, Ancart is constructing a large-scale painted concrete sculpture in Cadman Plaza Park, in Brooklyn. A wide concrete slab will be positioned on a concrete area, to mimic the city’s many handball courts, which the Fund notes have interested the artist for years due to "their unexpected relationship to the history of abstraction." This double-sided, freestanding wall will provide Ancart with a large painting surface that he feels "offers a unique possibility to show painting in a public space." The painting Ancart will create on the concrete will make use of the boundary lines typically drawn on handball courts, and will reference the abstract compositions created inadvertently when the city’s public courts are repainted to mask weather damage or graffiti.

At Frieze New York this week, David Zwirner will feature a special presentation of works created specifically for the fair by Harold Ancart and Christopher Williams.

Read a profile of Ancart by Kat Herriman in Cultured Magazine.

Four of the artist's sculptural works are also on view in India as part of a group exhibition at The Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace in Jaipur. Ancart loosely defines these works, which are made from oil stick on cast concrete, as "stairs."

Image:Harold Ancart, Subliminal Standard, Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn. Presented by Public Art Fund, 2019. Photo by Nicholas Knight. Courtesy Public Art Fund, New York