Bvlgari's First US Public Artwork Is a 33-Foot Gold Coil on the High Line
Walk north on the High Line from Gansevoort Street and the path narrows into the shaded passage beneath The Standard, where the hotel straddles the old rail viaduct on concrete legs. Right now, that passage is filled with gold.
auruBOROS, Urban Memory and Collective Dream is a 33-foot pneumatic sculpture that coils up out of the street below, loops through the covered span of the park, and turns a piece of ordinary walkway into something closer to a chamber. It is Bvlgari's first public art installation in the United States, and it is on view through September 20.
What you actually see
The work is inflatable, not cast. Air holds up a mirror-finish gold skin stretched over enormous tubular loops, which is why a form this big reads as weightless rather than monumental in the usual heavy sense.
The surface is fully reflective, so it picks up whatever is around it: the underside of the hotel, the grasses and wildflowers in the High Line's planting beds, the brick and glass of the Meatpacking District, and everyone standing near it. The artists describe the body of the piece as absorbing buildings, vegetation, people, weather, light and sky.
That reflectivity is the reason to plan your timing. Late afternoon sun rakes in under the hotel and the whole thing goes molten. On an overcast morning the same coils read cooler and more architectural.
Most importantly, it is not roped off. The High Line's path threads between and underneath the loops. You can stand inside a coil and look down the length of it as the rings nest into each other and frame a small circle of Manhattan at the far end. Plan on ten minutes if you are passing through and half an hour if you want photographs without someone else's elbow in them.
Who made it
auruBOROS is the work of Plastique Fantastique, the Berlin-based duo of Marco Canevacci and Yena Young, who have spent years building inflatable architecture for public space. Bvlgari commissioned it for Serpenti Infinito.
The name folds the Latin for gold into ouroboros, the ancient image of a serpent swallowing its own tail. Canevacci and Young began there and then broke the circle open, letting the serpent out of its closed loop and into the city. Canevacci has described being drawn to the particular collision at this site: the elevated park, the traffic on the street underneath, the hotel overhead, and the constant churn of people moving through all three at once. Young has said the piece had to feel monumental and light at the same time, and that it had to answer precisely to the architecture around it, to wind, and to how people circulate on a narrow elevated path. What looks precious and permanent, as the two put it, is actually light, fragile and temporary.
Bvlgari frames the gold as alchemical, a material that transforms, and the coils as a response to the pressures and rhythms running invisibly beneath the surface of New York. The sculpture was fabricated in Lübeck, Germany and installed here.
Why a snake, and why here
The serpent has been Bvlgari's signature form since the Serpenti watches and bracelets of the mid-twentieth century, the first of them a gold bracelet-watch from 1948 built on the flexible Tubogas technique that lets metal wrap a wrist like a living coil. Serpenti Infinito is the house's traveling art series built around that motif, and earlier chapters appeared in Shanghai, Seoul and Mumbai. New York is the newest stop, and the first to take the form of a free public artwork rather than a ticketed exhibition.
The unveiling on September 10 drew Anne Hathaway, Dua Lipa and Lisa, and new Serpenti high jewelry debuted alongside the sculpture. None of that is required to enjoy it. The work sits in a public park and asks nothing of you.
How to visit
Where: The High Line at Little West 12th Street, under The Standard, in the Meatpacking District.
When: Through Sunday, September 20. The High Line is open daily from 7am. Closing time is seasonal, so check thehighline.org before an evening visit.
Cost: Free. No ticket or reservation required.
Getting there: The Gansevoort Street entrance is the closest and has an elevator at the northwest corner of Gansevoort and Washington. The 14th Street entrance at 10th Avenue also has an elevator and puts you just north of the installation. The nearest subway is 14th Street and Eighth Avenue for the A, C, E and L.
Worth knowing: the covered section under The Standard is one of the few shaded stretches of the park, so it stays comfortable in the afternoon. It is also one of the narrowest stretches, so it backs up when a crowd gathers. Early morning is the quiet window.
