Art at Pratt

The Pratt Institute of Brooklyn is a world renowned art and architecture school. Students who go there can benefit from the best possible conditions in which to learn. There is an impressive collection of art works installed on the campus, many created by former students or teachers at Pratt. These works provide an excellent illustration of the difficulties for artists today to find their own style and their own place in a society where art has never been so celebrated.

AERATED RECTANGLE by Sal Romano. Brass, Copper, Solder, 2000.
Sal Romano reunites scrap, oddly shaped fragments of brass and copper. These are soldered together, allowing variable sizes of open spaces, which are eventually resolved in different minimal forms. Watch a video about "Baroque Minimalism" by Sal Romano

Phyllis Baker Hammond has explored the possibilities of laser cutting to create lace-like dimensional aluminum panels.

Phyllis Baker Hammond has explored the possibilities of laser cutting to create lace-like dimensional aluminum panels.

Jack Youngerman is a well-known painter born in 1926. However he has also ventured into both bas-relief and freestanding sculpture making use of the vocabulary found in his minimalist paintings.

Richard Heinric: Epistophy, Straight No Chaser, Round Midnight. Working in welded steel, sculptor Richard Heinrich explores the rhythms of intersecting planes to make geometric, architectural sculpture in desktop to monumental scale. In his words, "the welded steel plates have a strong architectronic message."

Arman (1928-2005): Accord Final.

The two vegetal sculptures pictured above are part of the Treehugger Project, an environmental art project that invites one to re-discover his relationship with nature at a very personal level.

The sculptures were created from twigs, branches and vines by Agnieszka Gradzig and Wiktor Szostalo, the latter an artist born in 1952 in Lithuania.

Metallic sculpture by Martha Walker inspired by an atomic mushroom cloud and the absurdity of war. Martha Walker is a former student of Pratt.

Dream of Africa (2004) by Shin Sangho. Shin Sangho is a ceramist/sculptor from South Korea. He has been especially inspired by Africa, its art and the unique energy and totemic power of the animal world he vividly observed there. His work evokes the spiritual as well as the physical power of various species, concentrating imaginatively on the ram and the horse, two animals that are culturally significant for Koreans as they relate to their ancient Mongolian origins.

"Body Burden, Placebo, Early Bird" by Todd Ayoung & Carlos Andrade. Carlos Andrade was born in Colombia and Todd Ayoung, who is a teacher at Pratt, was born in Trinidad. They collaborate on numerous art projects. Cruel, Perverted, Reckless are the three words posted on the side of this sculpture that symbolizes police brutality.

"Virgin and Child" (with high boots and a gas mask) by Marsha Pels who currently teaches at Pratt. This work is suspended in one of the entry corridors of the main building. Its juxtaposition, facing two other nearby works, seems to be symbolic: one is about police brutality (pictured above left) and the other about the abuse humans enact upon one another (pictured below left)

"Welcome" by Raphael Zollinger, an alumnus of Pratt. Raphael Zollinger has been working as a designer, prototyper and fabricator in Brooklyn, New York for the past 10 years. The prisoners cast in hard cement, their hands bound, sloped forward, create architypical images, symbols of the abuse humans visit on one another. The original installation incorporated a neon sign which spelled out an ironic message: "welcome."

Grace Knowlton has ben creating spherical combines for many years.

City Block (2007) by Sean Slemon. Sean created this work while a student at Pratt. He was born in 1978 in South Africa. The sculpture, made of a block of concrete, reminds us by implication of the absence of trees in many streets of Manhattan.

Jenny Lynn McNutt teaches studio arts at Pratt. "Let honey overflow in infinite tongues and let the ocean become a hive." The influence of her travels in Africa on her work is apparent.