Public Art Fund Presents Fred Eversley’s Magnetic New Sculpture in Central Park

Fred Eversley. Parabolic Light, 2023. Image credit: © Fred Eversley. David Kordansky Gallery, New York. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY. Presented by Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, New York City, Sep 7, 2023–Aug 25, 2024.

Eversley’s First Public Artwork in New York Explores New Dimensions and Perspectives

Fred Eversley: Parabolic Light

Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park

(60th Street and 5th Avenue)

September 7, 2023–August 25, 2024

Public Art Fund unveils Fred Eversley’s mesmerizing 12-foot tall sculpture at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park. Eversley’s powerful new magenta-tinted cast polyurethane work, titled Parabolic Light, offers visitors a captivating experience of perceiving the surrounding environment, others, and themselves through the artist’s “lens”. Simultaneously reflective and transparent, the luminescent parabolic form—a tapered cylinder—serves as a focal point of serenity, transcendence, and exploration of new dimensions and perspectives. The exhibition reflects Public Art Fund’s ongoing commitment to creating public exhibition opportunities for advanced career artists and artists of color, particularly those who may not have received widespread recognition earlier in their careers. Eversley’s presentation represents not only his first public sculpture in New York, but also the first outdoor placement of the artist’s large-scale polyurethane resin works.

“Fred Eversley’s art immerses us in perceptual experiences that bring us outside of ourselves. He explores how an artwork may inhabit the world around it while simultaneously inviting us into the realms of imagination and mystery,” said Public Art Fund Artistic & Executive Director Nicholas Baume. “Parabolic Light, Eversley’s first public work in his home city, takes his series of pristine cylindrical sculptures to a new scale and context, engaging with the ever-changing outdoor environment, the effects of natural light, and the countless visitors whose attention it captures.”

New York-based artist Fred Eversley is a pioneer of the West Coast Light and Space and Finish Fetish movements. With his scientific background as an electrical and aerospace engineer informing his artistic practice for over fifty years, Eversley is renowned for his vivid cast resin works that invite audience-artwork interaction through a range of sensory phenomena. Dedicated to expressing ideas about energy as a physical and metaphysical concern for all of humanity, Eversley’s sculptures center on the parabola, the only shape that concentrates all forms of energy—light, sound, and heat—into a single acoustic and optical focal point.

“My parabolic forms are all about energy. They are made to reflect all the infinite combinations of internal reflections, refractions, color changes, and other optical phenomena that one can experience within a single sculpture,” said artist Fred Eversley. “Parabolic Light and its display in Doris C. Freedman Plaza resonates with my vision of an energetic outdoor focal point to attract public audiences to spontaneously pause, slow down, and engage in numerous ways with a cosmic, mystifying object.”

Eversley’s presentation with Public Art Fund marks an ambitious continuation of his new Cylindrical Lens works, the artist’s first series of larger-than-human-scale, free-standing, floor-based sculptures. These recent works—which debuted at David Kordansky Gallery in May 2023—are conceptually linked to the cylindrical section sculptures the artist first exhibited in his first solo presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970. The largest work of the series thus far, Parabolic Light, is shaped as a plano-convex lens that focuses light into a single line. It acts as an optical instrument where stillness and motion appear to be present at the same time. Its geometrical mass gradually transitions its magenta hue, from rich saturation at its bottom to colorless transparency at the apex. The color saturation further shifts depending on the angle of the viewer and the direction of the sun. The sculpture obtains its luminous tone and reflective quality from its crystal-clear resin material and through a labor-intensive hand-polishing process. Parabolic Light appears simultaneously reflective and transparent, liquid and solid—a manmade form with an otherworldly, ethereal quality.

Parabolic Light prompts questions about how optical and physical perceptions determine how we connect with each other and the world, communicating a kinetic, palpable sense of the mysterious presence of energy throughout the universe. The sculpture’s properties, and direct placement on the ground, entice viewers to approach and move around the work. Bending, distorting, and reflecting faces, forms, and colors, the work heightens the relationship between the viewer’s body and the cylindrical lens. This key performative facet is on full display in this outdoor work. Interacting with natural light and spontaneous passers-by, it represents Eversley’s most far-reaching and dynamic foray into the cultivation of audience-artwork interaction to date. The work’s outdoor site allows for natural light to hit its surface and further generate a range of refractions and prismatic effects, connecting the viewer’s senses with the object and the environment in spellbinding ways. In this way, the sculpture expands and destabilizes multiple states of existence and perception. Straddling the scientific, metaphysical, and mystical, the sculpture functions as a portal for viewers to a world of radiant color, abstracted form, and a re-examination of one’s self and others within our surroundings.

Fred Eversley: Parabolic Light is curated by Public Art Fund Artistic & Executive Director Nicholas Baume with support from Assistant Curator Jenée-Daria Strand and initial development by former Public Art Fund Senior Curator Allison Glenn.

@PublicArtFund #FredEversley

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Fred Eversley (b. 1941, Brooklyn, New York) is a key figure in the development of contemporary art from Los Angeles during the postwar period. He synthesizes elements from several art historical movements associated with Southern California, including Light and Space, though his work is the product of a pioneering vision all his own, informed by lifelong studies on the timeless principles of light, space, time, and gravity. Prior to becoming an artist, Eversley moved to California to become an engineer, collaborating with NASA and major aerospace companies to develop high-energy acoustic and vibration testing laboratories. Eversley’s work on NASA’s second and third human spaceflight programs, Gemini and Apollo, developed his interest in the parabola, which began when he was a teen. His pioneering use of plastic, polyester resin, and industrial dyes and pigments reflects the technological advances that define the postwar period even as his work reveals the timeless inner workings of the human eye and mind.

Eversley will unveil his largest Public Commission to date, a sculptural installation, titled “Portals”, for permanent display in Able’s Park, at One Flagler, West Palm Beach in early summer of 2024, commissioned by Related Companies in partnership with the City of West Palm Beach. He has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (2022–2023); Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2017); Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2016); National Academy of Science, Washington, D.C. (1981); Palm Springs Art Museum, California (1977); Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California (1976); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1970). Eversley will be part of two major group shows as part of the Pacific Standard Time Art and Science Collide program 2024. Recent group exhibitions include Light and Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen (2021–2022); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983 (2017–2020, traveled to five venues); Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London (2018); Dynamo – A Century of Light and Motion in Art, Grand Palais, Paris (2013); Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 (Getty Foundation, 2011; traveled to Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2012). His work is in the permanent collections of more than three dozen museums throughout the world, including Tate Modern, London; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Museum of Modern Art, New York; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The first monograph dedicated to Eversley’s work was published by David Kordansky Gallery in 2022. Eversley lives and works in New York City.

VISITING THE EXHIBITION

Named for the founder of Public Art Fund and New York City’s first Director of Cultural Affairs, Doris C. Freedman Plaza was home to one of the organization’s first exhibitions and has been the site of more than 60 installations since Public Art Fund’s founding in 1977.

Location: Southeast entrance to Central Park at the corner of 60th Street and 5th Avenue Dates: September 7, 2023–August 25, 2024
Hours: Dawn to Dusk, Daily
Subways: N, R, W to 5th Avenue; 4, 5, 6 to 59th Street/Lexington Avenue

Public Art Fund exhibitions are always free and open to the public.
The exhibition can be explored anytime, anywhere, on the free Bloomberg Connects app.

SUPPORT

Bloomberg Philanthropies is the presenting sponsor of Fred Eversley: Parabolic Light.

Leadership support for Parabolic Light is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Angelo K H Chan & Frederick Wertheim; David Kordansky Gallery; Jennifer Sykes Harris; Holly & Jonathan Lipton; Jennifer & Jason New; Elizabeth Fearon Pepperman & Richard C. Pepperman II; and Rasika & Girish Reddy with major support from Charles B. Short & Chet Krayewski. Additional support is provided by Mary Ellen Oldenburg.

Special thanks to engineering partner Silman, as well as the Office of the Mayor, Manhattan Borough President, NYC Parks’ Art in the Park program, and Central Park Conservancy.

Public Art Fund is supported by the generosity of individuals, corporations, and private foundations including lead support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, along with major support from Abrams Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Cowles Charitable Trust, the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, The Fuhrman Family Foundation, The Marc Haas Foundation, Hartfield Foundation, William Talbott Hillman Foundation- Affirmation Arts Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, Red Crane Foundation, The Silverweed Foundation, and Wagner Foundation.

Public Art Fund exhibitions and programs are also supported in part with public funds from government agencies, including the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

ABOUT PUBLIC ART FUND

As the leader in its field, Public Art Fund brings dynamic contemporary art to a broad audience in New York City and beyond by mounting ambitious free exhibitions of international scope and impact that offer the public powerful experiences with art and the urban environment.