What art have I seen?
Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City.
What sticks in the mind?
Fifty bums raised in the air: yoga in the Park.
A giant doilly suspended in the trees
(Jennifer Cecere, Mom, 2009)
Looking across to Manhattan’s volume.
A series of physical challenges modelled on an exercise assault course
(Risa Puno, The Big Apple Showdown Spectacular, 2009)
A carnival wagon with artefacts displayed
(Dana Sherwood and The Black Forrest Fancies, The Ladies Society of Alchemical Agriculture, 2009)
A black barn of jig-sawed patterns
(Bernard Williams, Socrates Ply- Teck Barn, 2009)
A small garden, the most valuable space for urban-dwellers
(Jeanine Oleson, Retribution, 2009)
Socrates Sculpture Park reinvents itself as a cross-over public space between art and temporary amusement park. Away with formal sculptural concerns: roll up, roll up to the crazy summer Saturday on a field in the sun. Is it New York or is it somewhere in Kansas? Is it Little House On The Prairie or is it socially engaged practice? Even without the specific ‘dialogics’ intended to captivate the art audiences, Socrates is busy.
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
[…] Sculpture Park: last visit was in 2009. This time the summer is taken up by Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City, a show jointly […]