Durst brings luminous sculpture to 1133 Sixth

Already home to prominent art works such as Robert Indian’s Love at Sixth Avenue at 55th Street and William Crovello’s Curved Cube at the Time Life Building, Sixth Avenue is about to see another piece of high-profile corporate art. According to the New York Observer, the Durst Organization is adding a  90-foot-long, 12-foot high and six-foot deep sculpture by light artist Leo Villareal to the lobby of its office tower at 1133 Sixth Avenue.

The piece, dubbed Volume (Durst), is Villareal’s largest three-dimensional work, composed of 900 thin mirrored-stainless-steel blades that hang 12 feet down from the ceiling. Each blade contains 96 LED lights— for 86,400 in total. The piece will be visible through the lobby’s two-story windows facing the plaza outside the International Center for Photography.

“I love the chance encounter,” Villareal said at an opening reception for the lobby Tuesday night. “I love seeing people stopping in front of it, talking to their friends about, pointing.”

The addition of the sculpture is just part of Durst’s larger renovation of the building. Durst hired the architecture firm Gensler to design the new lobby, replace the lighting and add new elevators to the 1 million-square-foot tower. [NYO] —Christopher Cameron