Alfredo Jaar
A Logo for America
August 1–31, 2014
Nightly at 11:57pm
42nd–47th Streets between Broadway and 7th Avenue
New York City
www.timessquarenyc.org
www.alfredojaar.net
www.guggenheim.org
The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts, in collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum are pleased to present a revival of Alfredo Jaar‘s iconic 1987 public intervention A Logo for America in Times Square this August. As part of The Times Square Alliance’s Midnight Moment program, the work will premiere just before midnight on Friday, August 1, and play every night throughout the month at 11:57pm on over five blocks of signs in Times Square.
Amidst Times Square’s maelstrom of advertising and commercial culture, Alfredo Jaar‘s animation A Logo for America displays the statement “This is not America” emblazoned across the outline of the United States. Through an apparently contradictory juxtaposition, the work denounces the fact that the word “America” is routinely but erroneously applied to just one part of the American continent. In the 2014 reiteration of this 1987 intervention, Jaar points out that, almost 30 years later, the representation of an entire continent is still monopolized by the same, single country.
Originally created for Times Square’s now defunct Spectacolor sign— then a giant lightbulb display—the animation has been digitally re-mastered by the artist to adapt to Times Square’s contemporary electronic screens. This will be the first time the historic work will be displayed again in Times Square since its 1987 debut.
Originally commissioned by the Public Art Fund, A Logo for America‘s revival is made possible by Times Square Arts and the Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and presented in conjunction with Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, the second exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. The video documentation of Alfredo Jaar‘s original 1987 presentation of A Logo for America is featured at the Guggenheim Museum until October 1, as part of the exhibition organized by Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America.
Times Square Arts collaborates with contemporary artists to experiment and engage with one of the world’s most iconic urban spaces. 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 artists to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Midnight Moment is the sign operator’s largest-ever coordinated effort to display synchronized cutting-edge creative content nightly on electronic billboards throughout the site.
The Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative is a multiyear collaboration that charts contemporary art practice in three geographic regions—South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa—and encompasses curatorial residencies, international touring exhibitions, audience-driven education programming, and acquisitions for the Guggenheim’s permanent collection.
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. His work has been shown extensively around the world. More than 50 monographs have been published about his work. He has realized more than 60 public interventions around the world and recently completed Portraits of Justice, a permanent installation for John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
