Monday, September 12, 2005

Bikes as Art


A couple of months ago, the Jen Bekman gallery on Spring Street (off Bowery) had an exhibit entitled Bicycles Locked to Poles, featuring photos taken on the streets of New York City by John Glassie (who has a book by the same name, published by McSweeney’s). Artist David Shapiro has taken this concept a step further. From today's Times (above photo by Ruby Washington):

Where do all the old bicycles go: those twisted, rusted, fragmented remnants of freewheeling happiness that are chained to poles and left for dead on New York City streets?

A group of them, at least, have been given second acts as objets d'art by a New York-based artist who found about 100 bikes on city sidewalks this summer and took them to his own Island of Lost Bicycles in Queens.

To this burgeoning artistic trend, I add my own photo taken on St. Mark’s Place last winter (the mural at Tasty Falafel has since been painted over):