Friends of the High Line debuted Francis Cape’s The Other End of the Line, a major public art installation in the form of a previously occupied residential trailer installed on the Gansevoort Plaza, located at the northwest corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, on Friday, October 22, 2010.
Many members of ARTKABINETT social network of fine art collectors have walked this fantastic space during New York gallery and art fair visits.
Cape transformed the trailer, which was previously occupied in Sullivan County, NY, into a public exhibition space featuring artworks by upstate New York artists.
This is the first public art installation in New York City for Cape, who also hails from upstate New York.
He took inspiration from the High Line’s history as a freight train conduit that once transported raw materials and manufactured goods between upstate New York and New York City.
Working with guest curator Ian Berry, Curator of the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, Cape’s selected artists and their works focus on themes of locality and transience.
Trained as a carpenter and fine wood worker, Francis Cape previously focused on meticulous wood constructions that emphasized clean lines, minimalist beauty, and sound craftsmanship.
The focus of his artwork took a dramatic shift following a visit to New Orleans in 2005, just two months after Hurricane Katrina.
After witnessing the destruction of lives, buildings, and an entire city’s infrastructure, the artist turned to a combination of photography and construction, and began exploring themes of rescue and recovery efforts, social neglect, and design for living.
Cape’s use of a trailer home for The Other End of the Line is intended to question transience, permanence, and mobility, as well as how and where people live, and how and where art is shown.
Also at play in the work are certain assumptions about upstate New York, New York City, and their relationship, for example, the idea that upstate is the predetermined realm of agricultural production, while downstate is the cultural center.
“Francis Cape’s work explores how structures for living influence and reflect a variety of social and economic conditions. He engages with the ways that trailer design suggests transience and mobility, and yet they are often used like houses ‐‐ stationary and fixed,” said Lauren Ross, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of Arts Programs at Friends of the High Line.
“The title, The Other End of the Line, is open to interpretation. It might suggest the terminal destination on a journey, or a view onto the various ways in which people live in our state.”
The interior of the trailer will house a group exhibition of works in a wide range of mediums by artists based in upstate New York, including Michael Ashkin, Kenji Fujita, Richard Garrison, DeWitt Godfrey, Matt Harle, Chris Harvey, Margo Mensing, Rebecca Murtaugh, Michael Oatman, Gina Occhiogrosso, Ken Ragsdale, Nancy Shaver, and Alfonso Volo.
In his selections, guest curator Ian Berry was not only concerned with finding artists who live outside the urban areas, but those whose work captures the particular conditions of life in upstate New York.
“These artists use everyday things like shopping circulars, parking lots, targets from shooting ranges, prison architecture, and outmoded industries as sources. This range of eccentric sources can together form a strange picture of what might be found looking out the windows of this trailer home,” said guest curator Ian Berry.
“Our choices are focused on works that reference the built environment that surrounds them ‐ not so much the natural environment sometimes thought of when imagining upstate vistas.
The details of the cities and towns that these artists call home are much more varied than the utopian countryside pictured in 19th century paintings ‐ it is a place filled with potent details of a more modern history. A history told through economic and political shifts, with long family histories and breaks with tradition. All the works reveal a creative re‐forming of regional materials to tell decidedly unique stories.”
The Other End of the Line is the latest exhibit in High Line Art, a program by Friends of the High Line that commissions innovative, temporary artworks that provide park visitors with a unique, enriching experience and introduce contemporary artists to a wide audience.
More than three million visitors have come to the High Line since it opened in June 2009.
Other artworks currently on view include pieces by Spencer Finch, Richard Galpin, Valerie Hegarty, and Stephen Vitiello.
