We’re used to images of nature reclaiming abandoned buildings – but artists Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas have put a playful twist on this concept. They’ve erected a giant sea monster that appears to burst through an abandoned warehouse in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. — The Spaces
The relationship between public sculpture and architecture has been the subject of sharp criticism among architects. James Wines of SITE famously referred to most of what the sculptures typically installed in building plazas as "plop art," suggesting that they rarely contribute to the architecture on their sites but rather carelessly sit in front of them. Rachel Whiteread, a British sculptor, has taken on the same criticism, suggesting that much of the public art in her native London is “ill thought-out and put in places that it shouldn’t necessarily be.”
While Wines, Whiteread and other designers of the built environment continue to search for ways to integrate sculpture into architecture, Group X may have found a bold way forward. The anonymous art collective produced ‘Sea Monsters HERE,’ made up of 20 tentacles, each around 40 feet long, bursting through an abandoned warehouse’s steel skin and windows in Philadelphia's Navy Yard.
What might be the future of sculpture's relationship to architecture? How might their combination be imagined in fully occupied buildings? The provocation provided by Group X's installation demonstrates that the two can do much more than stand apart from one another across a plaza.
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