LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- Álvaro Urbano’s work has engaged in conversation with various entities across different times and places, including artists, writers, and architects; plants, animals, and buildings. At SculptureCenter, Urbano focuses on a potential ruin, or a ruin in progress – a public artwork by the American sculptor Scott Burton (1939–1989) that was rescued from destruction and now faces an uncertain future. The work was originally installed in the lobby of the Equitable Center building in midtown Manhattan in 1986 until it was dismantled in 2020, victim to a renovation.

Atrium Furnishment consisted of a semi-circular marble seating area, onyx lamps, a marble centerpiece, plants, and a polished bronze circle delimiting the sculptural plane, all set into a floor inlaid with red granite tiles. The overall shape was reminiscent of a clock marking 9 to 5 as a reminder of the behavioral structure of this corporate setting. Atrium Furnishment was one of many now-removed or modified works for public or semi-public space that Burton – a sculptor, performance artist, and writer critical to New York scenes in the 1970s and ’80s – realized throughout his life before he died of HIV-related illness in 1989.

Urbano re-organizes roughly half of the disassembled parts of Atrium Furnishment across SculptureCenter’s gallery, positioning them under an illuminated drop ceiling and alongside botanical sculptures in painted metal that reference the spring flora of Central Park in their blooming and decay. Urbano’s staging builds a bridge in time and space between the Equitable Center and the landscape of The Ramble, a section of Central Park near 73rd and 79th Streets. Both spaces are rich in codes of social interaction and operate as meeting points between the private and public spheres. Urbano’s interest in The Ramble originates from its 19th century design, which was seemingly untamed and difficult to navigate. It became known as an ideal spot for birdwatching; simultaneously it has hosted a popular queer cruising spot, where identity and ecological concerns surprisingly converged.

Given the lack of conditions to fully reassemble Burton’s work in any new context, Urbano underlines the precarious status of works like Atrium Furnishment regardless of the fortitude of their material composition. While Burton’s work will never be the same again, Urbano’s exhibition asks what new beginnings this assembly of the austere matter of his art engenders, and how its monumentality and fragility might revive its latent ideas.

Scott Burton’s Atrium Furnishment is presented in collaboration with Darling Green and the Equitable Art Collection. Special thanks to Soft Network.