Ryan McGinley Art Gets High Line Billboard

Detail of Ryan McGinley, Blue Falling. Courtesy the artist and Friends of the High Line.

From April 1-30 visitors to New York City's High Line park will get a new sight along its borders with the installment of photographer Ryan McGinley's "Blue Falling," a photograph depicting a person set against a vast blue background, on the High Line Billboard. The effect of the blue-on-blue may take unsuspecting viewers by surprise, with its figure that appears to be floating.

"I am excited to see this new billboard along the High Line as it contrasts with the sky behind it," says Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator & Director of High Line Art. "Ryan has turned the billboard into a vast field of deep blue. It looks almost as though the person was floating in a primordial amniotic liquid--a peaceful moment of pause among the visual bombardment surrounding the park."

When we last featured the New York-based artist in 2011, writer William Van Meter noted: " McGinley has carved out a successful career beyond the art world without compromising his work in the slightest. His recent Levi's advertisements could work in a gallery show. And he's rendered everyone from Olympians to Oscar nominees in sumptuous abstracted portfolios for The New York Times Magazine. This year, he shot Lady Gaga for the cover of Rolling Stone, an image that revealed pathos and emotion, instead of a pop star in a wacky get-up."