Comprising three monumental steel sculptures wrought from fencing that surrounded the former U.S. Embassy in Oslo and inspired by the historical significance of Cold War-era embassies as places of cultural exchange, Analogue Sites highlights the role of American modern art and architecture in cultural diplomacy and advocates for the preservation of these modernist masterpieces at this critical moment of their decommissioning.
Analogue Sites is installed along Park Avenue at East 53rd, 66th, and 67th Streets to respond to and engage with iconic modernist landmarks including the Seagram Building, the Lever House, and the historic Park Avenue Armory.
Jorge Otero-Pailos reflected, “In exhibiting these sculptures in New York, I hope to spark a dialogue about the crucial importance of preserving modernist U.S. Embassies and their potential to serve as analogue sites for cultural exchange between America and other countries around the world.
Each sculpture tells a story of transformation as the individual lines within them turn towards each other, creating a dynamic, open, and airy collective form. The individual paths of countless immigrants like me began at a U.S. Embassy, and our lives were intertwined and transformed as we became part of the open-ended, collective American story.
Embassies have enormous potential as sites of optimism and collective imagination for our multicultural futures. While far away, they are also at the very heart of the American experiment.”
Analogue Sites is presented in partnership with NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks Program and The Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee. McLaughlin, President, The Fund for Park Avenue, and Ronald D. Spencer, Esq, Chairman of The Fund’s Sculpture Committee.
Jorge Otero-Pailos’ Analogue Sites comes on the heels of his participation in a four-year-long renovation of the Eero Saarinen-designed U.S. Embassy in Oslo (1959), which has been restored for office use and reopened to the public in November 2023.
As a preservation architect, Jorge lent his expertise in modernist architecture to guide the preservation plan and the restoration of the original black precast concrete façade in collaboration with Norwegian preservationists and architects.
Jorge’s work allows us to reclaim that past, to look at it with intelligence, with curiosity and sensitivity and to bring to the present and thus to the future, the feelings, impressions and sensations of past moments, of disappearing worlds” says Maria Begonia Santos, Executive Director of the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute.
The April 1 event gathered exhibition and program partners for an artist presentation of the sculptures and an evening of celebration. Source by Jorge Otero-Pailos.