Eamon Ore-Giron

BAY PARKWAY STATION | BROOKLYN, NY Eamon Ore-Giron

Public art project commissioned by New York City Transit Authority

Eamon Ore-Giron created the expansive mosaic project entitled People’s Instinctive Travels: Homage to The Tribe. Based on six, original oil on linen paintings, Ore-Giron worked with fabricator Mosaicos Venecianos de México to translate his paintings into twenty-four glass mosaic panels that adorn the northbound and southbound platforms at the Bay Parkway station in Brooklyn.

Ore-Giron visualizes the world as abstract forms and shapes, and envisions the interaction and interplay of these shapes as a reflection of societal dynamics. This exchange between forms and his use of geometries symbolizes the ways in which people of different communities –such as those surrounding the Bay Parkway station– negotiate their relationships with each other and new places, a process of reinvention and creation.

The twelve mosaic panels on each platform reference the corresponding journey. As commuters travel southbound towards Coney Island, Ore-Giron’s designs reference the natural world, with fluid arcs and warm colors evoking the feelings one might have when going to the beach. The northbound platform mosaics mimick the movement of gears and the mechanics of the human-made world, conjuring feelings of New York’s ecstatic urban environment.

People’s Instinctive Travels: Homage to The Tribe originates from Eamon Ore-Giron’s “certain nostalgia for global modernism,” wherein “public works meant to create a kind of civic mindedness and unity.” His dynamic visual language references this unity, combined with the timelessness of indigenous and craft traditions. It is Ore-Giron’s hope that these mosaics will offer subway riders a space to see the world anew through the shapes, forms, colors, and movements of these artworks.

Text: Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design

Images: People’s Instinctive Travels: Homage to The Tribe (2018) © Eamon Ore-Giron, NYCT Bay Parkway Subway Station. Commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design. Photos: Peter Peirce.

Eamon Ore-Giron’s most recent artwork is at display in his solo exhibition Ziggurat/Zigurat, showing at Páramo from January 31st to April 3rd, 2020.