"Day's End" by David Hammons
A permanent public artwork has recently been unveiled in New York City in homage to Gordon Matta-Clark(1943-1978), son of renowned Chilean artist Roberto Matta Echaurren (1911-2002). The installation by David Hammons "Day's End" had a peculiar origin, born of an epiphany experienced by the artist in 2015. Then, Hammons toured the soon-to-be inaugurated Whitney Museum in downtown Manhattan at the invitation of its Director, Adam D. Weinberg. While gazing down towards the Hudson River through a fifth-floor window of the museum’s new home, Weinberg pointed out to Hammons the location where Gordon Matta-Clark had created the original installation in 1975, titled "Day's End". Two or three weeks later, Weinberg received an envelope with a signed sketch of the Hammons’ proposal being the same title as Matta-Clark’s 1975 work. That sketch was turned into reality this year.
The project inaugurated in May 2021 is one of the largest public installations to have been completed in the United States this year. It is located on public land adjacent to the Hudson River Park in front of the Whitney Museum of American Art. It adjoins the southern edge of the Gansevoort Peninsula, a one-block stretch of the remnants of what used to be Thirteenth Avenue.
Talking about “Day’s End” (2021), Hammons commented, "It's not a structure, it's not a building. … It's art. … It's like drawing in space." The structure itself is 52-feet-high, 65-feet-wide, and 325-feet-long and composed of thin steel-pipes that trace in situ the exact contour of the former Pier 52. That is where Gordon Matta-Clark, decades earlier, had pierced five openings — one of them on the floor — in the structure of the then deserted and derelict Riverside warehouse prior to its demolition. The slicing operations undertaken by Matta-Clark highlighted the light and water surrounding this pier. “Day’s End” (1975) was one of a number of works that Matta-Clark referred to as “Anarchitecture”; that is, sizable cuts or removals performed on abandoned or ready to be demolished properties.
Hammons' ghostly installation, leveled and aligned to perfection, is anchored on one side on the southern edge of the Gansevoort Peninsula and the other on the river bed. Most of the internal volume traced by the steel superstructure traverses the river, resting on 12 piers spaced sixty-five feet apart. The steel sculpture is painted a silver hue chosen by the artist, to both absorb and reflect light. On a bright sunny day, thousands of sparkling rays bounce from around the armature. To honor the title of the piece "Day’s End," the artist specified no lighting to illuminate it at night, preferring the city's ambient light to irradiate the work after sunset.
David Hammons — "Day’s End" (2021) creator — is an African American conceptual artist (b. 1943) and one of the most outstanding personalities in contemporary art in the United States. Hammons was born in the Midwest, studied on the West coast, and moved to New York in 1974, where he has lived ever since. He came to notoriety during the 1970s for his undeniable talent, the uniqueness of his work and subject matters, and for his persistent outsider's positioning in a white-dominated domain. At the time, artists of color did not have an easy entry into the contemporary art market or were publicized by the dominant media of the artworld. Hammons’ resolute yet evasive interaction with the art scene might have been established in part as critique, protest, and as a strategy of a lone cultural warrior in a territory where the need to break through had ramifications for himself and the community from which he drew his identity. In his work, an alchemy of objects, often fragments of African American artifacts and histories, is made visible in paintings, prints, drawings, videos, performances, and sculptures based on found or ruined objects.
The permanent installation of “Day’s End” (2021) took six years to realize. The actual production of the work was completed in two-and-one-half years, and involved fabricators and contractors in five different countries at a cost of almost $18 million. The project’s scope is a sign of how things have turned around for Hammons since the beginning of his career as an artist in New York. The realization of this monumental sculpture – the work of an esteemed African American artist paying homage to a Chilean descent American artist – coincides with a time of renewed activism on behalf of racial equality and social justice, as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter movement.
In its formal aspect, the phantasmagorical aspects of Hammons' piece is reminiscent of the minimalist work of Fred Sandback (1943-2003). Sandback utilized elastic cords and acrylic yarns to delineate three-dimensional volumetric spaces. In Hammons’ case, the strategy of silhouetting an architectural structure is minimal but also figurative; it is devised to activate the memory and history of the place by providing a “wire-frame” drawing of a structure that previously existed on that location. “Day’s End” (2021) references the eponymous work of Matta-Clark and simultaneously the gay community of Christopher Street that used to sunbath and gather on that pier and warehouse during the 70s and 80s.
Like an archaeologist “reverse-engineering” a forgotten citadel, Hammons erected a structure that is a specter of the past. In doing so, he engenders a vivid mental image of what might have otherwise been forgotten. With image comes an understanding of the site where a particular episode in the history of art and that of the LGBTQ+ community of New York transpired. Furthermore, the apparition-like sculpture set on water conveys a sense of magical abnormality that forces the viewer to stop and contemplate to make sense of is disquieting presence.
In reality, the specific physical context of the installation is destined to change. Today, a construction site, bounded by fences and filled with construction machinery, surrounds the Gansevoort Peninsula of which “Day’s End” (2021) is now a part. It is a dusty arena where some geese and goslings rest and roam around. Half of the pillars rest on rocks that produce a pleasant rumbling sound when water crashes against them. There is a dynamic quality to the site that fits well with the tensions manifest in the old derelict structure. However, in the near future, the site will undergo a dramatic transformation. The area will be completely sanitized with the transformation of Gansevoort Peninsula into a 5.5-acre park with green areas, flowers and trees, a sand beach, and a small boat launching area. "Day’s End" (2021) might become a slightly different installation then; one that will have to be revisited to assess the nature of its conversation with its new environment.
