David Byrne's World, Squished Under the High Line
By Kelly Chan, Architizer, 14 September 2011 [Link]

Starting tomorrow, a giant, near-bursting light blue globe will inhabit the space under the High Line on West 25th Street. This comical, swollen classroom artifact is the work of David Byrne, the beloved Talking Head who has recently become the self-proclaimed “public art guy” for Pace Gallery, the gallery behind Byrne’s latest site-specific commission.

Byrne’s Tight Spot occupies a prime piece of real estate under the High Line, a lot between 24th and 25th Streets recently acquired by Pace Gallery to expand their New York branch. Faced with a dilapidated empty space until the new gallery’s opening in the fall of 2012, Pace’s husband and wife team Marc and Andrea Glimcher thought a Chelsea-style demolition party was in order, and they went to Byrne for ideas for a new project.

The idea came almost immediately to Byrne. After surveying the lot, which was filled with rundown cars, debris and garbage, Byrne wanted to create something that would squash out the less than pleasant visual competition. In an interview with the Observer, he recalled his thought process: “It had to be something that really takes up the space. I thought ‘Ah, a balloon—an inflatable balloon.”

The result is a giant, inflated, stylized globe, deliberately lacking in topographical features to evoke the imaginative whims of elementary school geography and colorful beach balls more than a grave statement on today’s environmental crises. Coupled with an audio component, an alluring baritone “womp, womp, womp” set on loop to peak the curiosity of any passerby, the installation is classic David Byrne, an intoxicating mixture of tongue-and-cheek with delightfully hard-to-place artistic inspiration.