NEW YORK — Real estate has a certain relationship with avant-garde aesthetics: Starchitects like Frank Gehry and Herzog and de Meuron give their imprimatur to condos that sell like hotcakes, destination buildings feature en-suite gallery spaces and artist commissions in their lobbies. But increasingly, art is adorning New York City real estate before the buildings are even completed. In the latest instance of this trend, 345meatpacking, a new condominium complex being built in the Meatpacking District, will be clad in a giant reproduction of Yayoi Kusama’s “Yellow Trees” in lieu of the normal ugly construction netting. The work is set to debut officially on Monday, though it can already be glimpsed.
Developed by DDG Partners and designed by DDG Design, the building features 37 residences, a brick façade imported from Denmark, and bronze windows from Italy on the topmost three floors. Potential buyers can catch a glimpse of the full luxurious design in the firm’s enticing renderings, even though the bones of the building will soon be covered up by Kusama’s magnified painting.
It is perhaps funny that the Japanese artist’s work will appear on a net, given that Kusama calls her mammoth, minimalist, polka-dotted canvases “infinity nets.” The piece that will appear on 345meatpacking, “Yellow Trees,” is currently on view in Kusama’s Whitney Museum retrospective (and featured prominently in the ad campaign for the show), and there is a kind of free-associative logic to the choice, since the Whitney itself is set to mvoe to a new location in the Meatpacking district in 2015. With its sweeping bands of black covered in bright yellow spots, the work is as well suited for a 120-foot-tall piece of architecture as it is for a gallery wall. Visible from the High Line (and every building in the neighborhood), Manhattan’s newest piece of public art will doubtless become an eye-bending attraction. Just don’t stare too long — you might start to hallucinate.
Kusama's painting net will be completely installed on Monday, August 13 at 345 West 14th Street. Click on the slide show for renderings and photos of the installation.