NEW YORK, NY.- Public Art Fund presents Genesis Belanger: Heads or Tails, the artist’s first major public exhibition in New York. On view in City Hall Park through November 15, the exhibition features four sculptural scenes that play with commonplace park features: A flock of birds standing in the fountain, a wheelbarrow sprouting oversized flowers, three potted fruit trees, and two modern interpretations of the allegorical Lady Justice. As visitors discover these scenes throughout the park, Belanger’s sculptures invite reflection on humanity's connection to nature, our ability to discern real from fake, and how civic values are represented in our public spaces.
Known for her ceramic sculptures and installations, Belanger initially sculpted many of the works by hand in clay before they were later cast in resilient materials for her first outdoor exhibition. The sculptures’ color palette ranges from luscious florals to more muted tones that mimic the park’s fountain and traditional monumental sculpture.
In Distressed Assets, a flock of concrete birds perches within the City Hall Park Fountain, cast in pigments that echo the fountain’s stone. The birds pluck pennies from the water, marking the U.S. Mint’s retirement of the one-cent coin earlier this year. Inspired by the park’s proximity to Wall Street and the decommissioning of the penny, Belanger’s work reminds visitors that the cost of making a wish has risen.
“This exhibition marks a compelling shift for Genesis Belanger, an artist known for her astute observation of the creation of desire in domestic space,” said Melanie Kress, Senior Curator at Public Art Fund. “Here, she trains her eye on the public realm, drawing on the familiar language of civic sculpture – allegory, ornament, garden architecture – while introducing subtle shifts that reveal considerations of value, justice, and authenticity.”
Elsewhere in the park, three aluminum and brass potted fruit trees and an aluminum wheelbarrow filled with oversized weeds stand in quiet relation to the park’s living landscape. The artificial flora underscore current tensions between authenticity and simulation, and raise the question of whether they are adequate replacements for the native plantings.
Finally, two bronze figures offer Belanger’s interpretation of Lady Justice, an allegorical figure ubiquitous in civic centers like City Hall Park. Though traditional depictions of Lady Justice depict her blindfolded to suggest unbiased fairness, Belanger’s sculptures are only partially blind – not out of impartiality, but self-regard.
“I’m interested in creating work that reflects the contradictions we navigate every day, where life can be both exhilarating and devastating at the same time,” said Belanger. “These experiences are not in opposition, but instead they coexist. My work seeks to reflect a nuanced picture of our present."
Installed outdoors and encountered collectively, the sculptures transform City Hall Park into a stage set without a script. Visitors become participants within the scenes, moving between them and activating their relationships to architecture, landscape, and one another.
Genesis Belanger: Heads or Tails is curated by Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress.
Genesis Belanger's practice is centered on the creation of sculptural objects and tableaux that draw from, and critique, the aesthetics of capitalist production and consumption. Working in a multitude of materials and techniques, including porcelain, stoneware, metal, wood, upholstery, and painting, Belanger creates psychologically charged mise-en-scènes, creating objects that act as surrogates for human feeling or experience. Her work considers the ways in which advertising manipulates our psychology; the dynamics of consumption; issues of privacy in our increasingly online world; and coping mechanisms for the overwhelm.
