The British artist Thomas J Price brings a contemplative colossus to the Times Square

Manhattan’s Times Square is a boiler of the sensory excess, but by June 17, a 12-foot figure looks calm and confident about the crowd of tourists and bus core. Grounded in the stars . The figure classic in size and posture, but modern in dress, is finished in a matted black that reinforces your feeling of attitude.

“Grounded in the stars It’s a bit like a beacon because we remember another pace and remember another process, says Price.

The sculpture is monumental on a scale and is not monumental without the bombast and didactics of a conventional statue. It is installed near the street level instead of writing out of a base as nearby statues of the entertainer George M. Cohan and the soldier and priestly Francis P. Duffy -and presumably the monuments that the US President Donald Trump from the national garden of National Garders Humern, for the Humanities grant, for the project, for the project, for the project, for the project, for the project “National Garden”, for the National Garden project, for the National Garden project, for the National Garden project “for the” National Garders “project for the” National Garden “project.

“I make sculptures about statues and monuments. We know what they should look like, and it doesn’t look that way,” says Price. “It is someone I believe that it embodies an incredible energy that can keep up with the Times Square, but is delivered at a pace and in a format that also criticizes a little Times Square.”

The sculpture is one of two projects that are shown this spring with the non -profit Times Square Arts, and both want to disturb the hectic attention economy of the plaza. Every evening in May for three minutes before midnight, the 95 huge screens of the Square video from Price will play Man series (2005 – present) in which Claymation figures of black men stare and occasionally flash, but do not say anything. It is the latest iteration of Times Square Arts’ Midnight moments The series with works by Yoko Ono, Joan Jonas, JR and others.

“Presented in their glory”

“This could be the most expensive work I have ever done because the normal costs for the screen time at Times Square,” says Price. “But here, too, these are slow and incredibly contemplative, almost hypnotic, because everything is based on the blinking of the figures and this very subtle movements.”

A version of Grounded in the stars was introduced in Price’s 2023 Solo exhibition in downtown Hauser & Wirth in downtown Los Angeles. The presentation on Times Square coincides with its first exhibition with the gallery in New York, Resilience of the scale (Until June 14) with five highly towering sculptures of similarly contemplative, fictionalized figures. And whether the spectators meet them in the rest of a Soho gallery or in the chaos of the “intersection of the world”, prices hopes that the works will raise the reflections on the role of monuments and the types of people and stories they tend to.

“If these fictional characters come from a gender or a perceived breed that they have decided, they shouldn’t be at this level, and suddenly they see that they are presented in their glory, they call for the internal landscapes of the people,” he says. “But that is so important for us that we should do it every day. So this is my little gesture to offer the opportunity for people to question their assumptions about the world in which we live.”

• Thomas J. Prize, Grounded in the starsTimes Square, New York, until June 17th
• Thomas J. Prize, Man seriesTimes Square, New York, May 1st