3rd Floor

3rd Floor

Frente Feroz (Ferocious Front) is a permanent, site-specific, public art project commissioned by real estate developer Eugene Giscombe for the Lee Building at 125th Street and Park Avenue, New York City. This installation was inspired by Giscombe’s passionate interest in exotic animals, and in Harlem.

Since Grimanesa Amorós was a teenager living in Perú, she envisioned a project in or about Harlem, intrigued by its cultural relevance. The diversity of the people in this area is constantly changing. Important political and social ideas are exchanged and produced in Harlem, with 125th Street a main artery.

Amorós’s piece attracts the attention of the passing public. In the installation’s flashes of colored light, a building that would otherwise go unnoticed becomes the unexpected provocation of an awakening. For the commuters who view the scenes from the subway tracks, it may be an awakening to a panorama of Harlem over which their attention usually flickers briefly as the train continues on. For passersby on the street, it is an alteration to a familiar landscape, a moment to re-imagine their daily world.

The work itself is a light installation, wherein over-sized silhouettes of wild animals are projected in a deliberate moving light sequence onto the second story windows of the Lee Building. The animal shapes and light colors evoke the fantasies of children, and in so doing lift audiences out of their lives, to a place of simple wonder. As they realize what they are viewing and why, their own explorations become the works’ statement. Each person creates an unexpected relationship to the piece, a bond which resonates the exhibit and the viewer.