THE GLASS SEA Exhibition at Petrosino Square Runs 10/25-11/25

The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation has announced the installation of The Glass Sea, a collaborative architectural and video installation by artist Jessica Feldman and designer Steven Gertner. The exhibition will be on view between October 25 and November 25, 2012 in Petrosino Square, a small SoHo park with a rich history in public art at the crossroads of several dynamic New York neighborhoods.

Addressing issues of empathy, urban solitude, expulsion, and confinement, The Glass Sea depicts the daily lives and living spaces of inmates and patients in hospitals, jails, and psychiatric centers surrounding New York City. Drawing correlations amoung, Randall’s, Riker’s, Wards, Governors, and Roosevelt Islands, Feldman examines a population isolated physically and metaphorically by the boundaries imposed upon them as members of “disobedient” or “dysfunctional” groups.

Projected on Gertner’s striking, architecturally warped reinterpretation of a jail cell and rooms from these island establishments, The Glass Sea was created through a painstaking process of visiting and interviewing current and past residents of these nearby institutions. Through personal reenactment of inhabitants’ daily routines, Feldman creates a paradoxical experience of empathetic documentation, allowing viewers to imagine life from the perspective of the isolated. The viewing room will be open from 9:00 AM – 8:00 PM.

Jessica Feldman is a New York-based intermedia artist with a background in sound, electronics, sculpture, video, and installation. Many of her works are site-specific, public, and participatory. They deal with the relationships between the body, technology, media, and intimate psychological and communal social dynamics revealed by contemporary systems of control. Her work has been presented internationally in art and performance venues, as well as public parks, city streets, the New York City subways, and the internet. New York venues include Socrates Sculpture Park, White Box, The Kitchen, LMAKProjects, Roulette, and The Stone. Her work has received awards from NYSCA, the LMCC, the Max Kade Foundation, Columbia University, Meet the Composer, and the Experimental Television Center. Feldman currently teaches Graduate Media Studies at The New School. She received an MFA from Bard (2007) and is completing her PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. www.jessicafeldman.org

Steven Gertner is a New York-based designer. His practice is interested the architecture of institutions and the history of environmental design. He frequently works with artists in collaborative installations. Recent projects include an installation for the MOMA / PS1 Young Architect Program.

The Glass Sea is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency and through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Governors Island Residency Program.

The City of New York’s Department of Parks & Recreation Art in the Parks program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in New York City parks. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art or call 212-360-8163.