Hasta La Ideas

To help celebrate the opening of the new 10 block long second section of the High Line park in New York, Miami’s Friends With You, in association with AOL, has brought its Rainbow City installation of 40 monolithic, stripey and colourful air-filled sculptures to town where it will reside until July 5…

Rainbow City was originally commissioned by the Luminato Festival of the Arts in Toronto this time last year (read our blog post about it here) and showcased again in association with AOL and Paper Magazine during Miami Art Basel. In New York, it is currently ensconsed in a 16,000 square foot lot 30th Street and 10th Avenue in the Chelsea art district, right next to the newly-unveiled extension to the High Line. It opened yesterday – here are some photos taken from the vantage point of the High Line:

Essentially, Rainbow City is designed as a fun, colourful playground for children and adults alike, where the installations can be interacted with and played with. Some of the inflatables can be spun and bopped, whilst others function as environments that can be entered and explored. The site also includes a pop-up shop in which limited edition products designed for AOL will be available. As well as the sculptures, various cheery air-filled FWY characters including the Rainbow King (seen below with Friends With You founders Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval) will be promoting Friends With You’s positive message of “magic, luck and friendship” around New York.

“The essence of Rainbow City is to do something that’s actually really important in NYC right now,” says Borkson. “Even though New Yorkers are open to being friendly, people are isolated in modern times, they’re on their phone or they’re in a rush – they’re not generally engaged with their surroundings. What we hope Rainbow City is is an environment where you can let the child inside be evoked and you can really open your mind and open yourself, your friends, and the people aorund you to something new.”

As well as the Rainbow City installation, Friends With You are about to open their first solo exhibition, entitled :), in New York at The Hole gallery on The Bowery. At the time of writing, it hasn’t been fully installed – but it opens tonight and will run until August 6. More info at aolartists.com/rainbowcity

To find out more about Rainbow City in New York, click here

Read Eliza’s post about Rainbow City’s first outing in Toronto here

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog but if you’re not also reading Creative Review in print, you’re missing out.

The June issue of CR features a major retrospective on BBH and a profile piece on the agency’s founder, Sir John Hegarty. Plus, we have a beautiful photographic project from Jenny van Sommers, a discussion on how illustrators can maintain a long-term career, all the usual discussion and debate in Crit plus our Graduate Guide packed with advice for this year’s college leavers.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30%.