‘Reclining Liberty’ takes a rest — and raises questions — in Arlington _ Washington Post

Zaq Landsberg poses with his work, “Reclining Liberty,” which will remain on the lawn at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington until July 2024. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)

For Immediate Release: May 31, 2023

Andrew Logan Projects to Show

Reclining Liberty by Zaq Landsberg

for a Limited Engagement on June 8th, 2023

There will be an Opening Celebration on June 8th, from 6 - 8pm.

Reclining Liberty will be on view through June 24

Wednesday-Thursday-Friday 2 - 8pm

Saturday-Sunday

12 - 8pm and by appointment.

Red Hook, Brooklyn - Andrew Logan Projects is pleased to present Zaq Landsberg’s Reclining Liberty, in her return to New York City after a year on display in Liberty State Park, New Jersey. Deftly maneuvering the 25 foot long, 2,000 pound statue of Lady Liberty in a Reclining Buddha pose, into the Red Hook gallery space, Reclining Liberty will appear as she never has before, indoors, like a ship in a bottle.

Viewers will be able to touch, climb, sit atop, lean up against the figure, and interact with the monument at a human level, like her previous exhibitions in Morningside Park and Liberty State Park, but will also get a brief, rare view of the piece before and during the refinishing process enroute to her next destination (location to be announced on June 15). The piece will move into the gallery as is, weathered, worn and burnished by hundreds of thousands of hands over the past year.

Reclining Liberty, is a 25-foot-long mashup of the Statue of Liberty and the giant reclining Buddha statues of Asia. The piece, coated in plaster resin and finished with copper paint and an oxidizing acid, the patina mimics the actual Statue of Liberty.

Originally installed in Morningside Park in Harlem, in April 2021, it was instantly popular with park goers, and got picked up by local and international news outlets, and went viral on social media. Many gatherings, events, and moments have happened around the statue, which has become a landmark and quasi-mascot for the neighborhood. Reclining Liberty was formally the stage/backdrop for festivals, youth theater pieces and several musical performances. The piece was adorned with candles during Christmas Tree lighting event, school groups regularly visit it, a Buddist adorned the piece in flowers and incense and performed a funeral rite ceremony for a relative overseas, people photograph their dogs (and cats) on top of it, hold kids birthday parties next to it, etc.

In May 2022, the piece was relocated to Liberty State Park in Jersey City, in front of the Landing for the Ferries to Liberty Island. The piece saw literally boat loads of viewers, hundreds of thousands of tourists and locals in the past year. The piece has been so popular that there were regularly lines of people waiting their turn to take a picture with it.

Zaq Landsberg is a NYC-based artist. He specializes in large scale, site-specific sculptures, and public art. Much of his work involves things that look like other things.

He has exhibited solo shows with the NYC Parks Department, with chashama (NYC), at CUAC (Salt Lake City, Utah), La Ene, (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Pehr Space (LA).

His work has shown in group exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY), Franconia Sculpture Park, (Shafer, MN), CCK, (Buenos Aires, Argentina), MALBA, (Buenos Aires), Bronx Community College (NY), Figment Festival (Governors Island, NY), and others.

He was awarded a NYC Parks Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award in 2020, a UMEZ Arts Engagement Grant and LMCC Creative Engagement Grant (2020), NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Sculpture in 2017, the Art in the Parks: UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant and a More Art Engaging Artist Fellowship in 2018. He was an artist-in-residence with the LMCC Workspace Program 2019-2020, and Sculpture Space (Utica, NY) in 2012.

His antics have been covered in more than 40 countries in more than 27 languages, including Artnet news, Time Out NY, Vice, NY Daily News, The Believer, PEOPLE Magazine, Clarín (Argentina), ARTE (France), Blouin Art Info, Gothamist, KSL Salt Lake City, WGN Radio, NY Magazine, Fox News, The Daily Mail, among others.

He was born in Los Angeles, and holds a BFA from NYU. He is of Chinese and Jewish descent.

Zaqart.com

@zaqlandsberg

Andrew Logan hails from the Australian bush, and is passionate about what dimensional art can do for the soul! As a young man, Logan excelled as a stone and bronze sculptor. After hitchhiking much of the planet, he immigrated to New York City in the 90s. Here he studied large-scale lost wax casting, and facilitated installations of monumental sculptures throughout the United States. This evolved into a NYC based Crane Company that can both erect the skyscraper and adorn it- with sculpture. Andrew has been creating, fabricating, and installing sculpture for 35 years, and is considered the Go-To project manager for well known artists, large corporations, and non profit companies.

A few of his varied clients include Kiki Smith, Tanda Francis, Gillie and Marc, NIKE, and Hermes. His new Projects Space is a portal to the invigorating world of sculpture in New York City. “Let's face it,” he says, “Sculpture never sleeps.”

Andrew Logan Projects and Canal Street Studios was set up in the year 2000 by Andrew and Lexi Logan. It operates as a company that handles sculpture casting, art production and crane assisted installation. Canal St. Studios has a 10 acre facility in Bucks County PA, where the bronze foundry, blacksmith forges, painting department and art studios are located. It was here that Canal St. Studios recently completed casting a bronze staircase for the new HERMES flagship store on Madison Avenue. For over 20 years, Canal St. Studios has assisted artists, and companies in bringing their projects to fruition. Opening a showroom in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where his crane company is located, is a natural progression for Canal Street, and so was born Andrew Logan Projects.

The Projects space is particularly enthusiastic about showing Zaq’s work. His dedication, professionalism and fearlessness coupled with a penetrating humor makes for great art. As for Fitzhugh Karol, whose recent show was a smash hit, Andrew set up the gallery to further the enjoyment of such spirited artists. Presently we sense that nature would appreciate our voices. Sculpture is human nature manifested. Let's celebrate the artists with the verve to speak this language.

Andrew inaugurates the second show in his new gallery showcasing sculpture. Zaq’s work explores the perimeter at a decidedly heroic scale. Come feel this exuberance at the street level, open- fronted gallery that allows for a dynamic intimacy between the piece and the public. Lady Liberty can be witnessed from the street or, cheek to cheek.

Artist’s Statement on Reclining Liberty:

The Statue of Liberty stands tall in New York Harbor, and the object itself and the ideals it represents are literally and figurative above the viewers. Reclining Liberty attempts to bring these ideals down to a human scale and the literal grassroots level. The piece is at eye level with viewers, it’s touchable, charges no admission, is open to all whenever the park is open, and doesn’t even have a pedestal. It suggests that perhaps lofty ideals of Liberty and Freedom are not above us and out of reach, but are at our own level, all the time.

The pose of the Buddha lying down is not just about death, but is an illustration of one stage on the path to enlightenment. By merging the traditional Buddhist reclining pose and the quintessential American figurative symbol, Reclining Liberty asks the viewer to contemplate the status of the ideals the Statue of Liberty represents, is U.S. as in entity forever upright and tall, is it an eventual decline and fall, or is there another stage for the country, that will transcend this symbol all together. After all the events of 2020, and the unmooring of pretty much every American institution, this question is not just theoretical.

Monuments are where the historical, the political and the aesthetic meet. This is a throughline in Landsberg’s work. The US is in the midst of a reevaluation of monuments, their history, how they function in public space, how they’ve changed from their inception and their impact on the communities they’re in. Landsberg twists recognizable monuments to shed light on these questions, and demystify the agendas that created them.

Landsberg’s larger art practice is centered in the public sphere. Access is vital for his work. It’s a large part of his mission as an artist to meet viewers where they are at, with the minimum amount of barriers. Reclining Liberty charges no admission, open to all whenever the park or gallery is open, is interactive, touchable, at eye level with viewers, it doesn’t even have a pedestal. The piece made a serious impact in Morningside Park in Harlem, not necessarily because of the artwork itself, but because it became a neighborhood and community gathering place, and the park goers/general public/viewers really brought it to life.

Reclining Liberty is made possible in part with funding from:

Exchange Place Alliance

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

Zaqistan Arts Council

Friends of Morningside Park

LMCC

Marcus Garvey Park Alliance

New York City Department of Cultural Affairs

New York State Council on the Arts

Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation (UMEZ)

Video/Radio News Media:

Public art project "Reclining Liberty" reimagines Statue of Liberty, Dick Brennan, CBS New York News, 6/29/2022