Thinking big at 9-11 landmark

More than a dozen artworks have been selected or commissioned for the skyscraper. The Associated Press reports inNew York.

The new One World Trade Center opened to great fanfare last month as the first tenants moved into the 541meter tower through a vast lobby dominated by a monumental abstract mural. The color-splashed, 27.5-by-4.5-meter painting is among morethan a dozen works selected or commissioned for the skyscraper.

Asher Edelman, whose New York gallery curated the works, said the only criteria were that they be abstract, thought-provoking and exciting enough to get people “to look up from their handheld devices and actually look around them”.

A look at the artists and their works:

The Miami-born, Cuban-American artist is known for his vibrant, large-scale works, which can also be found at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His graffiti-like mural ONE: Union of the Senses is his largest work to date and was created as a symbol for diversity and unity.

“With the title, I wanted to convey unity among all people,” Parla says. “I wanted to use as many colors as possible. The diversity of color represents people.”

Working out of his Brooklyn studio for the better part of a year on the work, Parla describes how he created some of the long strokes by climbing a ladder, putting his brush to the canvas and then jumping off.

The artist fuses science and text into his large-scale paintings.

Randomly Placed Exact Percentages and Isotropic, which flank the lobby’s front desk, are evocative of the universe, exploring themes of science, mathematics and language, he says.

In Isotropic, Argue incorporates computer-manipulated text appropriated from literature like Moby Dick. The text is stretched on the canvas until it’s no longer decipherable.

The paintings are “about the possibilities of new combinations” that expand “the idea of how things can change in an infinite number of possible ways,” he says. “I hope people like the paintings and see something different in them every time they look at them.”

Gravity of Nightfall and Blue Triptych-Intrusion Into the Blue are the only selected works not by a living artist.

The bold large-scale oil compositions fill the canvas with intense swirls of blue, red and yellow and drips of paint. They decorate the tower’s north lobby.

Bultman, an American

abstract expressionist who died in 1983, was a member of a group nicknamed The Irascibles alongside Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. The American painter and printmaker Robert Motherwell called him “one of the most splendid, radiant and inspired painters ofmy generation”.

Goldberg’s One World Trade Center Series is a group of seven oil paintings on the 64th-floor sky lobby, opposite a ribbon of north-facing windows.

The New York City artist works in natural light, intensifying the color and depth of each painting over several months.

The works are divided into three groups, each dominated by interlocking streams of blue, red and yellow.

“It is my hope that the sensuality, richness and complexity of the color structure are animated by the light and the viewer,” Goldberg says.

BryanHuntcreated the only sculpture commissioned for the skyscraper. The towering work consists of an elongated form balanced precariously on a smaller white spherical piece made of wood, steel and polyester fabric. The title is AxisMundi.

The vertical sculpture measures nearly 4 meters by 1.5 meters and sits on the east side of the sky lobby.

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS Left: Artist Jose Parla paints one of his pieces in the lobby of the new One World Trade Center building in New York. Right: A sculpture by Bryan Hunt, AxisMundi, before being transported to the site in New York.