tags: Times Square, 42nd street, Losing My Marbles, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC
Losing my Marbles (2003).
Artist: Lisa Dinhofer.
Losing my Marbles, image 3, detail 5. Glass mosaics on mezzanine walls of the 42nd Street (Times Square) for the A, C and E trains. This mosaic was just installed since I photographed it as the adhesive was still drying and the workmen were sweeping up their mess!
Lisa Dinhofer uses representations of toy marbles to challenge our imaginations by playing with illusions that alter physical perceptions. Her work spans a 32-foot-long wall and two adjacent side walls. Created in glass mosaic, the main artwork consists of a gold-colored trompe l'oeil frame surrounding a black and white tiled floor that serves as the backdrop for the marbles, which seem to roll toward the viewer. On the side walls, free-floating marbles seem to breaking free in space. Dinhofer comments, "Every object I paint actually exists; I work from life. The space I create is believable -- but not real. Because I design my own space, I call myself an 'illusionist' painter rather than a 'realist'. The space in my work is invented. It's flattened -- like the space we see on a television or a computer screen."
I have photographed glass tile mosaic artworks from several NYC subway stations now, so far, all are westside Manhattan subway lines; including the Cathedral Parkway/110th Street platform (downtown-bound 1 train only), 42nd street/Times Square upstairs platform (1, 2 & 3 trains), West 66th street/Lincoln Center Station (1 train), West 34th Street/Pennsylvania Station (A, C & E trains), Chambers Street (A & C trains), Houston Street (1 train), Pennsylvania "Penn" station (1, 2 & 3 trains) [subway art archives] and, my favorite subway station of all, the American Museum of Natural History station at 81st and Central Park West (B & C trains) [AMNH archives].
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