The inauguration of a public work of art is very often a roll of the dice for its designer, who may as well be accused of making the landscape ugly as well as being praised for his creative genius. A stroke of luck this time for Montreal artist Félix Marzell: it is the second scenario that seemed to win, Wednesday, in New York, after the unveiling with great fanfare in a city park of a giant apple of wood, the fruit of more than a year and a half of hard work for this renowned urban designer.
“A month before the pandemic hit New York with full force, I was in a hotel room on Broadway where the decor was very busy. I didn’t want to stay there so I was going to take refuge in the shower, where I was singing New York, New York. The idea of the big apple came to me naturally and in great detail ”, explains with a touch of humor Félix Marzell, president and founder of the firm Dix au carré, which has been working in urban art for nine years.
Eight million solitudes
Should we see a reference to the shower head that he used as a microphone when he played the Sinatra in his simplest device? Félix Marzell laughs on the phone. In the first degree, obviously, his work evokes The Big Apple, Manhattan. This cosmopolitan place where we take a bite of life, when it is not life that devours us, the city teeming with temptations.
But beyond the forbidden fruit, New York paradoxically remains this great city where eight million solitudes rub shoulders without knowing each other, notes the creator. “For two days, I have seen people glued to their phones. And suddenly this morning there is this big red mass. People stop and watch for a few seconds before going back to their phones, a little surprised. That’s what I like about my job, the effect of surprise, ”he adds when the time comes to give a little depth to his work, the first bearing his signature to be established in New York, although his company has contracts all over the world.
Bringing people
Made possible thanks to a collaboration with the multinational Amazon and the General Delegation of Quebec in New York, “The Big Apple” by Félix Marzell is installed in a park in the Hell’s Kitchen district in Manhattan. She will stay there for the next eleven months. Until then, people can sit inside the structure, an enclosed space, open to discussion, away from all the New York hubbub. “I think that during the pandemic, we did not miss meetings, as everyone was talking to each other on screens. On the other hand, we lacked meeting places. Urban art can answer that, ”insists the manager of Dix au carré.
This concept is reminiscent of the famous Banc-Nana from the same design firm. This banana-shaped bench installed near Mont-Royal station in 2015 is now on display in Baie-Saint-Paul, in Charlevoix. It is also Dix au carré which is behind the interactive park in tribute to the singer Lhasa de Sela, in the Mile-End.
“You have to create a bond with the heart, and it’s the simplest ideas that often get unanimous support, because they are easy to adopt. It’s the right balance to succeed in a work of art, ”notes the trained luthier, who still has his head full of projects, for Montreal as for the rest of the world.
Watch video
–
–
