Joshua Frankel featured in "A Kinetic Cloud of Humanity for Moynihan Train Hall" by Laura van Straaten in New York Times.
"A bouncy strut, a dart-and-weave, a dawdle with a dog. A stroller, a grocery cart, a wheelchair. A burqa, a beanie, a bowler.
The diversity of those animated images in a new, silent four-channel video playing now on the huge, elevated screens at Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan mirrors the mix of commuters below.
The video is a site-specific commission by the artist, animator and director Joshua Frankel that will run in 30-second loops every 15 minutes, across a 160-foot-wide LED display as part of the Art at Amtrak program, which in New York has recently diversified from murals into video art. (Frankel’s work is surrounded by permanent stationary installations by Kehinde Wiley, Stan Douglas and Elmgreen & Dragset, introduced in 2020 in a separate program.)
Both Frankel’s commission, called “Within the crowd there is a quality,” and his exhibition of the same name, opening Nov. 1 at Hesse Flatow, a gallery several blocks away, are “deeply, personally meaningful for me,” Frankel said. His grandfather worked for two decades for the U.S. Postal Service in the James A. Farley Building that now houses the train hall. Frankel, 43, grew up nearby, at 43rd Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen." - Laura van Straaten.
