Curator Stephanie Roach

Watch Your Step is a group exhibition of nineteen contemporary artists, each of whom create dynamic artworks that are installed either directly on the floor, or utilize the architecture of the gallery, namely the space between ground and wall, to explore shifting perspectives. Artists include Grimanesa Amoros, Polly Apfelbaum, Lynda Benglis, Patricia Cronin, Tara Donovan, Tom Friedman, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Steven and William Ladd, Wolfgang Laib, Richard Long, Joe Mangrum, Michael Phelan, Richard Serra, Kiki Smith, Julianne Swartz, Matthew Stone, Venske & Spänle, and Corban Walker.

Watch Your Step: A group exhibition of floor works on view at The FLAG Art Foundation Michael Phelan, Tomorrow's a new day... (No.5), 2009-2011. Glass, 90 in x 72 inches. Photo Courtesy the artist and The FLAG Art Foundation, NY.

 NEW YORK, NY.- Traditional sculpture on a pedestal depicts either a person, a place, or an event, so there is always an allegiance to the theme of the representation. Once you take the work off the pedestal, it's in the same behavioral space as the viewer walking around it. Once that happens, time and space come into play, in terms of how you experience the sculpture in relation to the context and the field and your bodily movement. -Richard Serra

The FLAG Art Foundation presents Watch Your Step, a group exhibition of floor works on

 view through August 24, 2012.

 Watch Your Step surveys a series of floor sculptures by 21 artists in a diverse range of

 media including found objects, handmade materials, and traditional mediums such as

 bronze, steel, and marble. The exhibition recalibrates the viewer's perspective, moving it

 from eye-to ground-level and, in some instances, forcing the viewer to literally watch one's

 step upon encountering the works. The featured works address themes such as repetition,

 the relationship between the part and the whole, the human form, and nature.

 The evolution of the relationship among a sculpture, the floor, and a viewer plays an

 important role within this conversation. Constantin Brancusi redefined this paradigm in the

 early twentieth century with his treatment of the pedestal. Breaking from Renaissance

 tradition of using the pedestal to elevate and isolate sculpture, Brancusi instead incorporated

 hand-carved bases into his works, highlighting the point of connection between our reality -

 the ground - and the ideality of art. Carl Andre drew inspiration from Brancusi and made the

 horizontal plane his primary focus with an array of materials directly flat on the ground in

 different formats in his Minimalist sculptures. This seminal shift redefined how sculpture is

 perceived and displayed today.

 Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Julianne Swartz and Patricia Cronin utilize the floor as a surface to

 express poignant manifestations of love and mortality. Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Corner of

 Baci), composed of a pile of Italian chocolate "kisses," and Swartz's Flood, an unsuspecting

 cherry wood box that plays a chorus of voices saying "I love you" when opened, invite

 viewers to slow down and activate their senses. Cronin's bronze sculpture Memorial to a

 Marriage depicts the artist and her partner lying in bed embracing.

 Polly Apfelbaum and Lynda Benglis challenge traditional relationships to the ground and blur

 the distinction between painting and sculpture. Apfelbaum's flower work Rihanna, named

 after the pop star, is a toxic fluorescent yellow that captures the contradiction between

 toughness and unbridled beauty. Benglis' Untitled recalls the painterly and gestural Abstract

 Expressionist artists with colorful vicious pours of polyurethane on the floor.

 Richard Serra and Corban Walker highlight the presence and absence of the ground in the

 presentation of their works. Serra's Even Level - a six-foot, half-ton sculpture, with two

 pieces of hot rolled steel in a tilted T-formation - rests precariously against the gallery wall

 and is only anchored to the floor by the small edge. Walker references his height in relation

 to the average male height with a series of stainless steel cables strewn across facing walls;

 viewers over four feet must walk underneath it to pass through the corridor. Though the

 installation does not have any contact with the floor, it increases awareness of one's height

 in relation to the horizontal plane and the architecture.

 Richard Long, Michael Phelan, and Wolfgang Laib incorporate organic materials while Mona

 Hatoum, Tara Donovan, and the Ladd brothers combine found objects. The floor becomes

 the nexus between the earth and the developed world.