On National Day, Keppel Land issued a press release announcing their funding of a major new public art work in the traffic island formed at the meeting point of Raffles Quay, Collyer Quay and
Marina Boulevard. The work by artist David Gerstein is said to be 18.35 metres tall, to have been a technical challenge, and to have cost the developers of the adjacent One Raffles Place some two million Singapore dollars.

The patron's description of the work will have a familiar ring to students of Singapore's public sculpture. Says Mr David Martin, General Manager, One Raffles Quay Pte Ltd, "The sculpture will depict an upward spiral of progress and capture the energy and momentum of the district, Singapore and its people." As Tay Kheng Soon would say, we're getting another "screw-up" sculpture... (For more such "upward spirals" see here, here and, only half a block away from the site of the Gerstein, here.)

No image of the work was included in the press release. I'm going to resist prejudging the piece from what's available on the Internet of Mr Gerstein's work. Most of his work is colorful caricature, certainly populist.

Labels: patrons, Singapore

# posted @ 12:20 AM 3 comments | add a comment

Click here for a pix of the work-in-progress: not so promising...
By Katong, at 12:32 PM  

Actually Jonathan Borofksy'smonumental Walking to the Sky sculpture was originally proposed to Mr David Martin. Apparently the patrons and the artist of Spiral Upwards were so inspired by this important monumental piece that they not only sought something similar but decided to play semantics with the title of the artwork as well.

In anycase Jonathan Borofksy very tall Walking to the Sky which was to epitomize the energy and progress of Singapore and the BFC is now located in Carnegie Mellon University.
See http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060510_borofsky.html

So much for integrity and originality.
By Anonymous, at 12:03 PM  

There have been other proposals to bring Borofsky's work to Singapore, including at least one proposal to bring "Walking to the Sky" to Singapore in the mid-90s. I think the first "Walking to the Sky" was shown at Kassel. (See www.borofsky.com for more.)
By Katong, at 10:34 AM