Internationally renowned artist Marko Remec featured in new installation
The Nassau County Museum of Art has just unveiled three monumental site-specific works by the internationally known sculptor Marko Remec. Showcased in locations chosen by the artist on the 145-acre museum property, the dazzling, mirrored works represent a major commission, part of a plan to revitalize the museum’s sculpture park, which has in the past been considered among the finest in the region.
The three sculptures are outstanding examples of the main approaches that Remec takes to site-specific work. Standing 26-feet tall before the stately museum façade, the beacon-like “Would That I Wish For (Tall Totem)” explores issues of safety and narcissism, while also drawing on the tradition of incorporating the faces of ancestors in a monumental totem (except that the faces are those of the viewer as reflected in the mirrors).
Not far from the Tall Totem, a sprawling horizontal frieze created from 16 huge convex dome mirrors, “NYET,” assumes the pattern of a stylized eye. The title is a sly allusion to the government surveillance and persecution of Dimitri Shostakovich and other artists, whose work was performed at the Baker Mansion in Manhattan when the first iteration of this powerful work was presented. At the museum, it occupies a quiet corner of the great lawn, glaring at a dozen or so of the museum’s collection. As Remec asks, “Who is saying nyet to whom?”
The third work, “Vertebrate Progression (Field Totem),” is an alluring pathway of more than a hundred-twenty-five 33-inch convex dome mirrors that rise and fall with the dramatic contours of the land along the stately drive that leads to the museum mansion. The title is an allusion to paleontology, the passion of Childs Frick, who lived in the mansion and kept his laboratory and library of specimens in a nearby outbuilding, now the Manes Family Art and Education Center. Like the glittering ribbon of light of a gigantic diamond tennis bracelet, the procession of mirrors along the grass has a mesmerizing rhythmic effect.
Marko Remec is a conceptual sculptor living and working in New York City whose work has been showcased at such prestigious museums and collections as MASS MoCA, LongHouse Reserve, Chesterwood, Kunsthaus Zug, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Salem Art Works and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. He collaborated with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov on the Ship of Tolerance Project in Zug and Rome, and has attracted the notice of notable collectors and critics with his wry wit and brilliant compositional strategies. A graduate of Williams College and Stanford University, and a former investment banker, Remec is a rising star in the Contemporary sculpture world.
“We are thrilled to kick off our major new program of commissioned outdoor sculpture with an artist of Marko Remec’s stature and brilliance,” said Angela Susan Anton, president of the museum’s board of trustees.
The new commission was the brainchild of the Museum’s quite active exhibition committee and wholly supported financially by a generous donor who requests anonymity as well as a generous gift from Charlotte Feng Ford.
Nassau County Museum of Art is located at One Museum Drive in Roslyn Harbor. For current exhibitions, events, days/times and directions, call 516-484-9337 or visit www.nassaumuseum.org.
—Submitted by Nassau County Museum of Art
