Manhattan’s Times Square is a cauldron of sensory excess, but until 17 June, a 12ft-tall figure of self-assured introspection is looking out calmly and confidently over the area’s throngs of tourists and buskers. Grounded in the Stars (2023) is a bronze sculpture by the British artist Thomas J. Price depicting a fictionalised woman standing, hands on hips, in a contrapposto pose. Classical in scale and stance, but modern in dress, the figure is finished in a matted black that amplifies its sense of poise.
“Grounded in the Stars is a little bit like a beacon for reminding us about a different pace, and for reminding us about a different process,” Price says. “Instead of having things force-fed through your eyeballs into your brain to capture your attention at unrelenting speed, it gives people time to reflect on an object.”
The sculpture is monumental in scale, yet anti-monumental in tone, with none of the bombast and didacticism of a conventional statue. It is installed at close to street level, rather than looming from a pedestal like nearby statues of the entertainer George M. Cohan and the soldier and priest Francis P. Duffy—and, presumably, the monuments that US President Donald Trump wants to commission, with money from cancelled National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities grants, for his “National Garden of American Heroes” project.
“I make sculptures about statues and monuments. We know what they’re supposed to look like, and this doesn’t look like that,” Price says. “It’s somebody who I believe embodies an incredible energy which can rival Times Square, but it’s delivered at a pace and in a format which also critiques Times Square a little bit.”
The sculpture is one of two projects Price is showing this spring with the nonprofit Times Square Arts, and they both aim to disrupt the plaza’s frantic attention economy. Every night in May, for three minutes leading up to midnight, the square’s 95 giant screens will play videos from Price’s Man Series (2005–present), in which claymation figures of Black men stare pensively, blinking occasionally but saying nothing. It is the latest iteration of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moments series, which has featured works by Yoko Ono, Joan Jonas, JR and others.
‘Presented in their gloriousness’
“This might be the most expensive work I’ve ever made, given the normal cost of screen time in Times Square,” Price says. “But again, these are made to be slow and incredibly contemplative, almost hypnotic, because it’s all based on the figures’ blinks and these very subtle moves.”
Still from Thomas J. Price's Man Series (2005-present), which will be shown on the large digital screens in Times Square as part of Times Square Arts' Midnight Moments series Courtesy Thomas J Price and Hauser & Wirth
A brush with... Thomas J Price
A version of Grounded in the Stars was featured in Price’s 2023 solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s Downtown Los Angeles location. Its presentation in Times Square coincides with his first exhibition with the gallery in New York, Resilience of Scale (until 14 June), which features five towering sculptures of similarly contemplative, fictionalised figures. And whether viewers encounter them in the calm of a Soho gallery or the chaos of the “Crossroads of the World”, Price hopes the works will prompt reflections about the role of monuments and the types of people and stories they tend to elevate.
“If these fictional characters are from a gender or perceived race that you have decided should not be at this level, and suddenly you see them presented in their gloriousness, it challenges people’s internal landscapes,” he says. “But this is so important for us to do, we should all be doing this to ourselves daily. So this is my little gesture to present an opportunity for people to question their assumptions about the world we live in.”
- Thomas J. Price, Grounded in the Stars, Times Square, New York, until 17 June
- Thomas J. Price, Man Series, Times Square, New York, 1-31 May
