Times Square Arts Announces Spring Season Program

With Midnight Moments Featuring Artist Jeffrey Gibson, Art Collective 13BC and Digital Media Collective Optical Animal

(NEW YORK, NY — February 6, 2020) — Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is pleased to announce the Spring Season Arts Program.

Times Square Arts has collaborated with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to engage with one of the world’s most iconic public spaces using the Square’s electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant spaces, and commercial venues. Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition — with an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million— featuring artists’ videos synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.

As part of Times Square Alliance’s commitment to showcasing the best of contemporary art, this season’s lineup includes new Midnight Moment projects featuring artist Jeffrey Gibson (March), art collective 13BC (April), and digital media collective Optical Animal (May).

FULL SCHEDULE

March 1–31, 2020
Jeffrey Gibson, She Never Dances Alone
Presented with the Brooklyn Museum
An artist of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, Jeffrey Gibson celebrates the importance of Indigenous women by transforming the performance of a single jingle dress dancer into a kaleidoscopic, ancestral call for strength and healing. This Midnight Moment is presented with the Brooklyn Museum on the occasion of Gibson’s exhibition When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks, on view until January 10, 2021.

On March 7 from 11:30pm to midnight, Times Square Arts will host a live performance and viewing of She Never Dances Alone on Duffy Square (46^th Street and Broadway), presented with The Armory Show, Roberts Projects and Kavi Gupta.

April 1–30, 2020
13BC, When Horses Were Coconuts
Inspired by the Foley sound effect historically linked to the atomic bomb, the artist collective 13BC takes us on an underwater, upside-down journey into a waterfall to plumb the intertwined legacies of mass media and the spectacle of war.

Join Times Square Arts and 13BC for a viewing of When Horses Were Coconuts on Friday, April 3 from 11:30pm to midnight on Duffy Square (46^th Street and Broadway).

May 1–31, 2020
Optical Animal, Projection Napping
Design Pavilion
In this series of intimate portraits by the digital media collective Optical Animal, napping New Yorkers curl into the corners of Times Square’s digital displays, catching a quick snooze in the city that never sleeps. Presented with Design Pavilion.

Join Times Square Arts, Optical Animal and Design Pavilion for a viewing Projection Napping on Friday, May 15 from 11:30pm to midnight on Duffy Square (46th Street and Broadway).

ABOUT MIDNIGHT MOMENT

Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million. For more information, visit tsq.org/midnightmoment.

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS

Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support for Midnight Moment is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Times Square Advertising Coalition. Visit TSq.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Instagram at @TSqArts.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ABOUT JEFFREY GIBSON

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hudson, NY. His artworks make reference to various aesthetic and material histories rooted in Indigenous cultures of the Americas, and in modern and contemporary subcultures. Gibson's previous exhibitions include, Jeffrey Gibson, LIKE A HAMMER, organized by the Denver Art Museum, and This Is The Day, organized by The Wellin Museum. Other notable solo exhibitions include: The Anthropophagic Effect (2019) The New Museum, New York; Look How Far We've Come! (2017), Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee; Jeffrey Gibson: Speak to Me, (2017), Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, Oklahoma City; and A Kind of Confession (2016), Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, Savannah. Select group exhibitions include: The 2019 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, NYC, Aftereffect (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Suffering from Realness (2019),Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; and Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now (2018), Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR. Gibson has upcoming solo exhibitions at MassMoCA, The Brooklyn Museum and The Wattis Institute. Gibson is also a member of the faculty at Bard College.

ABOUT 13BC

13BC is a research and production collective for moving images co-founded in 2015 by Vic Brooks, Lucy Raven, and Evan Calder Williams. 13BC’s solo exhibition Fatal Act premiered at 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York University in 2019 and subsequently toured to Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. Previous exhibitions and screenings include Modern Mondays: An Evening with 13BC, Doc Fornight 2020, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020); La Grand Balcon, La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Each Aspect of Life Is a Thing of Triad, mumok, Vienna (2016); Fade In: Int. Art Gallery - Day, Swiss Institute, New York (2016); Over You/You, 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2015); and Random Acts, Frieze Film / Channel 4 Television, London (2015).

ABOUT OPTICAL ANIMAL

Optical Animal is a Brooklyn based digital arts collective founded by creative duo JR Skola and Max Nova. Since 2008, they have found a home in creating unique experiences that employ new ideas and technology, while remaining firmly rooted in the ancient human love for storytelling. Optical Animal has presented video and projection art at events and festivals around the world including Mutek IMG in Montreal, Art Basel in Miami, Adelaide Festival in Australia, NXNW in Toronto, and the Westbeth Gallery in New York City. Work by Optical Animal has been commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, the New World Symphony, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Calvin Klein, Christian Louboutin, and the New York Times, among others.

CONNECT

Instagram: @tsqarts
Twitter: @TSqArts
Facebook: @timessquarenyc

PRESS CONTACTS

Marcella Zimmermann
Vice President, Cultural Counsel
marcella@culturalcounsel.com

Ali Rigo
Senior Account Executive, Cultural Counsel
ali@culturalcounsel.com

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