A giant surreal sculpture just landed outside the New Museum

"A towering biomorphic work by British artist Sarah Lucas that now presides over the corner of Bowery and Prince Street, like the patron saint of laundromats and downtown art weirdness. The sculpture is the first major commission created specifically for the museum's brand-new public plaza, part of the institution's recently completed OMA-designed expansion. At the center of the piece is a giant reclining female form set atop an oversized washing machine, right above one of Manhattan's loudest, busiest intersections."

"The work draws from Lucas' long-running series, a body of sculptures she's been developing since the late 1990s using distorted, abstracted figures that often resemble human bodies collapsing into furniture, domestic objects or strange fleshy creatures. If that sounds intense, welcome to Sarah Lucas. For decades, Lucas has built a reputation as one of contemporary art's great agents of chaos, using cigarettes, toilets, tabloid newspapers, tights and food to poke at ideas about gender, bodies and power."

"Her work frequently lampoons the traditionally masculine world of monumental public sculpture and the new sculpture continues that tradition by transforming a giant appliance into a kind of absurd feminist pedestal. There may not be a more fitting location for it than the Bowery, where luxury condos, restaurant crowds, delivery bikes and restaurant supply stores already coexist in a permanent state of sensory overload. The commission is also notable for launching a new long-term initiative supporting women artists in public sculpture."

A towering biomorphic outdoor sculpture by Sarah Lucas was unveiled at the corner of Bowery and Prince Street, installed for a new public plaza created through the museum’s OMA-designed expansion. The work features a reclining female form positioned atop an oversized washing machine above a busy Manhattan intersection. The sculpture draws on Lucas’s long-running practice of distorted, abstracted figures that resemble bodies collapsing into furniture, domestic objects, or strange fleshy creatures. Her broader body of work uses everyday materials and provocative imagery to challenge ideas about gender, bodies, and power, often undermining traditional monumental public sculpture. The location on the Bowery matches the area’s constant sensory overload, and the commission also begins a long-term initiative supporting women artists in public sculpture.

Read at Time Out New York