Art in Four Boroughs: Sculptures in Queens A Big Draw

Surrounded by a neon yellow pebbled courtyard and vintage storefronts, SculptureCenter in Long Island City, Queens deconstructs the boundaries between art and reception space. Its warehouse structure provokes visual curiosity even before one reaches the visitor’s booth that functions as part of the current exhibition.

The nonprofit center, run by a small, deeply committed staff, promotes the work of contemporary artists. Off the beaten track, it serves as less of a tourist destination than as a haunt of the art cognoscenti. According to director of communications and practicing artist Nickolas Roudané, the organization’s independent status promotes its ability to challenge the viewer and to emanate a vibe that is both welcoming and experimental.

The architecture of this nineteenth-century trolley warehouse interacts with the pieces on display, negating the limits of what can and cannot constitute sculpture. Likewise, Roudané described the center as anything but a “hermetic, idealist space” since it allows the structural elements of the building to influence the works. In fact, Roudané assured me that I was not hallucinating when I noticed that even the site’s fire alarms, peeling paint, and exposed pipes could conceptually connect with an installation.

He stated that the space’s inherent overload of visual information challenges the artist and promotes a “dialogue between art and location.” The second floor of the center currently hosts the “In Practice” series and exhibits the work of emerging artists, who work with curators to adapt the pieces to the center’s unique space.

According to Roudané, “The goal of contemporary art is to set off a series of questions.” The current first floor exhibit, “The Space of the Work and the Place of the Object,” analyzes the relationship between the sculpture to the way it was produced and calls attention to both the visual reception and temporal lives of the sculpted objects. In an installation of transparency film by Walead Beshty, the physical act of the film being X-rayed at an airport produces the vibrant colors of the installation while conceptually alluding to issues of international travel.

Roudané himself functions in this exhibit as part of Karen Schneider’s piece Tubular. As Schneider places Roudané in a glass booth next to a temporary studio filled with his works in progress, she draws attention to Roudané’s status as an artist working at an institution. Roudané’s work focuses on painting landscape scenes that invoke the “imagination” and “construct a world within a world,” which conveniently parallels his role in Schneider’s piece.

The center encourages discourse as it hosts a practicing artists’ lecture series in conjunction with The New School. The upcoming exhibit titled “The University of Trash” will generate a forum to study alternative methods of city planning. In April, the annual Lucky Draw benefit will include the work of over 150 artists, and this summer, artists and musicians will collaborate in a concert series accompanied by installations.

SculptureCenter generates a gray area for the production and reception of work in which the viewer’s mind summons the space to meaning.

Alyssa Rapp is a Barnard College sophomore majoring in art history and visual arts. Art in Four Boroughs runs alternate Tuesdays.