The common pedestrian on a metropolis stroll is extra more likely to discover the tall, flowering timber they see above them than the remnants of trunks now not there. Photographer Alexa Hoyer is exclusive: It was the derelict, deserted sidewalk tree beds that she couldn’t ignore when she moved to Ridgewood, Queens. Fallow Frames is her venture documenting these by chance inventive tableaux present in her neighborhood. From March 9 by March 31, Manhattan’s PS122 Gallery is exhibiting the physique of digital pictures alongside a bunch present curated by Hoyer that makes use of the tree mattress as a conceptual and aesthetic place to begin.
New York Metropolis specifically locations a premium on area. It’s a query of how a lot of it you have got, how lengthy you’ve had it, and who had it earlier than. Hoyer, who’s initially from Hamburg, Germany, sees a darker subtext hidden within the particulars of public city life. All through 2020, she documented boarded-up storefronts and social distancing avenue markings. As captured in her brilliant compositions, ad-hoc arrows, dots, and six-feet-apart chalk drawings grow to be “a part of an unlimited set up throughout the town,” she instructed Hyperallergic.
Deserted tree beds may be interpreted as clean areas, indicative of a type of city void. Maybe they’ve one thing to say concerning the unequal distribution of inexperienced area. However Hoyer, who has a sculpture background, is most desirous about seeing them as “readymades” within the custom of Marcel Duchamp or Robert Rauschenberg.
“When faraway from their context and considered in multiples, they tackle a type of abstraction, presumably even complicated the viewer about their true nature. What precisely am I taking a look at?” Hoyer mentioned. “This is the reason I photographed all of them head-on, excluding the encircling streets, primarily making a canvas for contemplation.”
Throughout her analysis stage, Hoyer encountered a number of artists already utilizing empty New York tree beds of their work. Lee Cannarozzo’s land artwork experiment Flax Estates (2022) noticed the artist cultivating deserted tree beds in Chelsea (most of which have been destroyed by pigeons, canine, or metropolis employees). One other artist, Jude Tallichet, sculpted “Warmth Map” (2019) from a big solid of an overgrown root system discovered close to her studio, additionally in Ridgewood.
These works impressed Hoyer to curate a bunch present — which additionally contains bioplastic work by Liz Atz, drawings by Alexandra Borovski and Ethan Shoshan, sculptures by Matt Freedman and Alexander Zev, and earthwork by Katarina Jerinic — however she’s hesitant to lump them below one umbrella. “There are quite a few themes which are explored, corresponding to city interventions, sustainability and environmental consciousness, gentrification, materials experimentation, the idea of absurdity,” Hoyer mentioned.
“Fallow Frames” was partly funded by a 2023 grant from the Queens Artwork Fund, and it will definitely reached an viewers native to the neighborhood and past the normal artwork world; architects, group gardeners, and environmental activists have been reaching out to Hoyer with curiosity. Utilizing Google Maps, she created a walking tour that corresponds along with her pictures. It’s a counterpoint to the Parks Division’s map of each official tree planted by the town.
Right now, there are 6,397 timber reported in Ridgewood. Will that quantity decline? In flip, one imagines, Hoyer’s map continues to develop.