A pickup truck carrying the mobile version of the sculpture, and the newly installed replica atop the Detour Gallery, as seen Saturday. Below, artist Sergio Furnari. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Sure to prompt double-takes, Red Bank’s newest piece of outdoor art brings an iconic American photograph to three dimensions.
If the image looks familiar, that’s because it’s based on a famous 1932 photograph of steelworkers taking a lunch break on a steel beam 850 feet above the ground at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, then under construction.
A detail of Furnari’s work atop the Detour Gallery. (Photo below by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Sculptor Sergio Furnari‘s work was installed Saturday on a parapet at the rear of the yet-to-open Detour Gallery, formerly to have been called the Wanderlust Gallery.
Owned by art collector Ken Schwartz, owner of the World Subaru car dealership in Tinton Falls, the massive gallery fronts on Clay Street. The sculpture, overlooking a parking lot, is visible from Clay Street, Harding Road and Broad Street.
redbankgreen found the sculptor, a 46-year-old native Sicilian who’s now an American living in New York, sitting in his pickup truck in the parking lot shortly after 11 figures, made of steel and epoxy, were installed on the seven-foot-long beam. His truck is equipped with another version of the sculpture secured above the cab and bed.
“The first time I saw the photograph, I fell in love,” Furnari said. Inspired, he began executing the image in miniatures before embarking on life-sized realizations, a handful of which are now installed around the country, including Buffalo, Springfield, Nashville, he said.
“It’s an American icon,” he said. “People connect to them.”
The work is for sale, at a “very negotiable” $250,000, Funari said.
Meantime, “I think they look cool over here,” he said of the workers. “They look like they’re at home.”
Here’s the trailer to a 2012 film about the beam photo:
