Interdisciplinary artist Danielle Dean deconstructs the narratives of consumer culture in the heart of Times Square with Long Low Line. Through animations rendered in watercolor, Dean reimagines archival American auto advertisements, removing the cars from their sweeping fictional landscapes to peel back the illusions of capitalism and aspirational consumerism. Referencing the continuous movement of both industrial assembly lines and multiplane camera techniques, Dean uses linear panning to journey through sun-kissed mountain ranges and empty architectural ruins. Eerie and partially denuded columns harken to the ways in which natural rubber was tapped from trees to support the mass production of the auto industry.

The vignettes in Long Low Line are specifically inspired by advertising campaigns for “Fordlândia”, a town built amidst the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the 1920s to source the rubber. By extrapolating the idealized imagery originally employed to justify mass consumption and environmental extraction, Dean reclaims the visual language of advertising to imagine new fantastical environments in one of the world’s most iconic commercial spaces. Long Low Line offers a conceptual space to consider the relation between the environment, imagined or real, and consumer capitalism.

January’s presentation in Times Square stems from a longer version of Long Low Line (2019), presented at the 2022 Whitney Biennial Quiet As It’s Kept. Dean’s Midnight Moment coincides with her exhibition at 47 Canal titled Horizongrabber, on view from December 8, 2022 – January 28, 2023.

Effect animation for Long Low Line by Marjolaine Lebrasseur.

Midnight Moment is made possible by the Times Square Advertising Coalition, ABC SuperSign, American Eagle, Branded Cities, Clear Channel, Disney Store, Express, Levi's, LG, Luxottica Group S.p.A., Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, New Tradition, Sensory Interactive, Sephora, Sherwood Equities, Show + Tell, Silvercast, Swatch, T-Mobile, and JCDecaux.

Major support of Times Square Arts is provided by Morgan Stanley. Additional program support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul 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 Meta Open Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Times Square Advertising Coalition.