Vibrant New Mosaic Bench by Artist Kerstin Brätsch Now on View on the High Line, Opening The Park’s Fall 2024 Art Season

Kerstin Brätsch, Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry (Palladiana, Mosaico_Bench I), 2023–2024.

The Fall Season’s Public Artworks Include Works by Kerstin Brätsch, Sacha Gordon, and Rosana Paulino.

The High Line announced the upcoming slate of new artworks to be installed on the park this fall. Ranging from billboard installations to a sculptural work to an original mural, these new artworks on the High Line each transform the medium of painting into engaging formats for the public. Artists Kerstin Brätsch, Sasha Gordon, and Rosana Paulino are sure to both provide respite and spark curiosity for park goers with their artworks, which collectively draw symbolic meaning and reflect forms from the natural world and the body in ways both familiar and surreal.

Kerstin Brätsch’s “stone painting”— a mosaic bench with a tree sprouting from within— is the first in the season of artworks debuting along the length of the park in Fall 2024. In mid-November, Rosana Paulino will debut a new original mural, The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night. Shortly after, two vibrant artworks by painter Sasha Gordon will be on view on the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard.

“The fall is a truly special time to introduce new artworks to the High Line amid the changing foliage,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, who commissioned the artworks for the High Line. “Kerstin Brätsch, Sasha Gordon, and Rosana Paulino’s new artworks for the High Line each offer eye-opening perspectives on our relationships between our bodies and the natural environment, in distinct and imaginative forms.”

High Line Art, the arm of the High Line responsible for organizing public art installations and performances on the park, commissions artists—both emerging and established—from around the world to create new artworks inspired by the unique setting of the park. The changing seasons and surrounding plantings offer shifting perspectives on the artworks, each of which is on view for one year.

Kerstin Brätsch
Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry (Palladiana, Mosaico_Bench I), 2023–2024
On the High Line at 23rd Street
On view Now – September 2025

For the High Line at 23rd Street, Kerstin Brätsch created Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry (Palladiana, Mosaico_Bench I), a large-scale site-specific mosaic bench that becomes a “stone painting.” The work is a material translation of one of her Fossil Psychics works made of stucco marmo, in which the painting gesture is expressed resembling fossilized fragments, as if the result of geologic phenomena, enshrining the past into the present—like runes, or a fly trapped in amber. Wrapped around a Forest Pansy redbud tree, the work offers a moment of respite for parkgoers, quietly urging visitors to reconnect with the natural world that surrounds them on the High Line.

Kerstin Brätsch’s practice revolves around painting, oscillating between a conceptual analysis of the medium and a devotion to painterly processes. Brätsch extends the field of painting, exploring the ways the body can be expressed psychologically, psychically, physically, and socially. She often invites artisanal practices—such as stained glass and stucco marmo—and collaborative projects into her process. Brätsch frequently works with friends, colleagues, and artisans in an effort to move from the personal to the collective, and to provoke the notion of authorship historically ascribed to the figure of the painter.

Kerstin Brätsch (b. 1979, Hamburg, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and New York, New York. Brätsch’s Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry (Palladiana, Mosaico_Bench I) is presented on the High Line courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

Rosana Paulino
The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night
Adjacent to the High Line at 22nd Street
On view November 15, 2024 – November 2025

The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night is a continuation of Rosana Paulino’s mangrove series, which depicts tree-women as a mythological archetype and symbol for the Brazilian biome. Paulino notes that mangroves, like the country’s Black and Indigenous people, have been mistreated and exploited. The artist highlights the symbolic meaning inherent in this ecosystem: It is where life begins, as a home for countless species and as a blue carbon reservoir, and where life ends, due to the decomposition of the mangrove itself.

In The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night, Paulino re-imagines this duality between life and death as day and night. From left to right, the color of the sky fades from daylight to a deeper, midnight hue. In lieu of gilded halos traditionally seen in European representations of holy figures, the tree-women’s heads are framed by halos resembling the sun and the moon. Similarly, the animals surrounding the goddesses also reference the transition from day to night. On the left side of the composition, Paulino depicts two diurnal birds native to the mangrove biome: the white egret and, in the tree-woman’s hands, the scarlet ibis. To her right, the other goddess holds an owl and is flanked by two bats, both of which are nocturnal. Together, these elements present a rich, new mythological framework for the mangrove, offering a departure from depictions shaped by colonization and exploitation.

Rosana Paulino’s practice spans drawing, painting, suture, printmaking, collage, sculpture, and installation. Her work foregrounds social, ethnic, and gender issues, taking particular care to explore the lasting legacy of slavery and the history of both racial and gender-based violence in Brazil. The artist weaves personal, scientific, and historical archives throughout her work, using these materials to demonstrate and then deconstruct violent colonial structures, particularly as they relate to Afro-Brazilian women. Taking into account the impact these archives and memories have on collective values and belief systems, Paulino examines the construction of myths—not only as an aesthetic pillar but also as a key influence on cultural consciousness.

Rosana Paulino (b. 1967, São Paulo, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.

Sasha Gordon
My Love of Upholstery, 2024
Untitled, 2024
On the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard, on Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets
On view November 18, 2024 – January 2025

For the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard, Sasha Gordon presents two works, My Love of Upholstery (2024) and Untitled (2024). Both hail from the artist’s most recent body of work, in which she examines challenging taboos and standards of representation. Her images present a wide range of emotional states, frequently considered through the lens of her identity as a queer Asian American woman. Through endless avatars, she portrays the othering of unconventional human bodies and her own experiences of alienation.

Towering over 30th Street and Dyer Avenue, the artist’s fluctuating visage appears at massive scale, marked by a distinct unnaturalness—in My Love of Upholstery (2024), where she depicts herself with a Pinocchio-like wood-grain body, and in Untitled (2024), in which her face and pupils are marked with five-pointed stars. These visions are simultaneously anxious and intimate, teetering somewhere between tender fantasy and nightmare. Her avatars, looming large within their frames, offer both artist and audience an outlet for exploring contradictory emotions and complex personal experiences.

In her artistic practice, Gordon creates surreal paintings and drawings that explore themes of sexuality, gender, race, and the body. Often depicting herself as subject, Gordon is keenly attuned to art historical themes of portraiture and self-portraiture, and of the politics of representation. She approaches these categories with inventiveness and humor, using the uncanny to communicate very real concerns around self-image and identity.

Sasha Gordon (b. 1998, Somers, New York) lives and works in New York, New York.

SUPPORT
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund.

Rosana Paulino’s The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night, is made possible, in part, by an in-kind donation from Morgenstern Capital and Canvas Property Group. Additional in-kind support is provided by Overall Murals.

Project support for the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard is provided by Suzanne Deal Booth. Additional support for the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard is provided by Neda Young.

High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

ABOUT HIGH LINE ART
Founded in 2009, High Line Art commissions and produces a wide array of artworks on the High Line, including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Led by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and presented by the High Line, the art program invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the unique architecture, history, and design of the park, and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.

For more information on High Line Art, please visit thehighline.org/art.

ABOUT THE HIGH LINE
The High Line is both a nonprofit organization and a public park on the West Side of Manhattan. Through our work with communities on and off the High Line, we’re devoted to reimagining public spaces to create connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.

Built on a historic, elevated rail line, the High Line was always intended to be more than a park. You can walk through the gardens, view art, experience a performance, enjoy food or beverage, or connect with friends and neighbors—all while enjoying a unique perspective of New York City.

Nearly 100% of our annual budget comes through donations. The High Line is owned by the City of New York and we operate under a license agreement with NYC Parks.

For more information, visit thehighline.org and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram.

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