Time.news – The Italian installation in Bryant Park, “The Guardians: Hero & Superhero”, by Antonio Pio Saracinocarry out ten years. And to celebrate the event Manhattan will host a retrospective of the Apulian architect, sculptor and designer who has lived and worked in the Big Apple for years.
The works e projects of the last decade of Saracino. The retrospective is hosted by a historic gallery, founded by Gerardus Widdershoven in 1974, which offers the stage to the best of Art Deco and contemporary art, from sculpture to design to ceramics, with one goal: to leave a mark on the identity of a city and a community.
It was 2013 when Saracino, whose works are part, among others, of permanent collections at the Center Pompidou in Paris, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Art and Design in New York and Maas in Sydney, Australia, was offered two opportunities, which presented great challenges: produce a symbol of Italy on the occasion of the Year of Italian Culture in New York and create a project to be hosted in Bryant Park, one of the most iconic places in Manhattan.
His idea,”The Guardians: Hero and Superhero”, encompassed both challenges. “Hero” was donated to the United States by the Italian government to celebrate the closing of the event. “Superhero” was commissioned by the owner of number 3 Bryant Park. The first represented an interpretation of Michelangelo’s David, the symbolic defender of Florence. Made of Carrara marble, “Hero” is the synthesis of a classic and contemporary work, made of solid material and digital lines. Michelangelo’s masterpiece was decomposed, lightened. As tall as the original, 5 meters and 17 centimetres, but lighter (less than five tons against the 5.6 of the original). “Superhero” counterbalances his monumental pose to watch over 41st street.
Ten years later, the two symbolic protectors of New York, as Marvel super heroes, still dominate the scene in Manhattan and they mark the union between the United States and Italy. While the two ‘superheroes’ are there to indicate the only way for those who decide to live, or were born, in New York: to go forward, never giving up. Ten years after their installation, that message is still there, stronger than ever