Right Time, Right Place: What is the right time, right place for public art?

Melanie Kress, Associate Curator at High Line

in conversation with

Katharina Gruzei, artist-curator of Right Time, Right Place

Ysabel Pinyol Blasi, Executive director & curator at Monira Foundation

and participating artists: Eginhartz Kanter, Ann Messner, Nancy Nowacek, and Stefanos Tsivopoulos. 

This talk is hosted in the framework of Right Time, Right Place – an exhibition at Mana Contemporary examining the ways in which public space has become a highly contested territory in the past decades. It is centered around artistic strategies for working with the layered meanings, realities, and possibilities of the public space. Ann Messner presents a selection of artworks realized in NYC since the 1970s. Eginhartz Kanter introduces the “Sculpture Park West”, an art project in Linz, Austria where artworks were informally installed on a traffic island between Highways. Nancy Nowacek gives an insight to a decade-long engagement with urban waterways, whereas Stefanos Tsivopoulos’s artwork “One Step Forward Two Steps Back”, will be screened as part of the talk.

In 2020, artist-curator Katharina Gruzei convened a group of Austria- and New York-based artists virtually to exchange ideas about working in the public realm. 2022 brings them together to make works in the public space of New York City. Their exchanges and creative acts culminate in Right Time, Right Place, a multi-generational exhibition. Katharina Gruzei gathers these specially commissioned pieces with existing artworks in this group show of emerging and established artists, hosted by Ysabel Pinyol-Blasi and the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary, New Jersey.