To celebrate the New York City Opera's 2009-10 season and the company's return to the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, City Opera and Deitch Projects will present a site-specific installation by artist E.V. Day in the theater's Promenade. A series of dynamic sculpture... Read more
To celebrate the New York City Opera’s 2009-10 season and the company’s return to the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, City Opera and Deitch Projects will present a site-specific installation by artist E.V. Day in the theater’s Promenade. A series of dynamic sculptures made from a selection of vintage City Opera costumes and costume accessories will be dramatically suspended overhead in exuberant simulated motion.
DEITCH PROJECTS AND THE NEW YORK CITY OPERA PRESENT AN INSTALLATION BY E.V. DAY
Working in a medium she describes as “exploding couture,” Day will lend soaring animation to garments including Cio-Cio-San’s kimono, Don Giovanni’s cape, Carmen’s mantilla and Manon’s elegant 18th-century dress (in a twin of the costume worn by Beverly Sills). Day has chosen the garments from City Opera’s rich archive of retired costumes, and has transformed them into dramatic stop-motion expressions of the explosive energy and extravagance of opera. Each sculpture will be suspended by fishing tackle within its own 10-foot-high “stage” comprising a pair of horizontal steel rings, each six feet in diameter. The rings will then be hung like stars at three different heights above the Philip Johnson-designed Promenade, making them easily visible to operagoers on all tiers. A map of the installation will help viewers to identify the character and production represented by each sculpture.
“The visual arts are an intrinsic part of City Opera’s mission, whether as costume design, set design or graphics,” stated George Steel, General Manager and Artistic Director of New York City Opera. “E.V. Day’s brilliant installation is an exciting and very appropriate way to make the visual arts a part of the festivities, as we honor this important moment in our company’s history.”
“I want the sculptures to channel and release the energy that flows into these garments from the characters who wear them,” E.V. Day stated. “I want to fill the space with the lyricism and bravura of opera, and show off the fascinating architecture of panniers, bustles, crinolines and codpieces. To be able to work with this treasure trove of costumes, in this great architectural space, is the opportunity
of a lifetime.”
