grace – 10 years since…

314 Atlantic Avenue

Bertrand Delacroix Gallery is pleased to present grace - 10 years since…, a light sculpture installation by Pietro Costa, on view at 314 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. The sculpture’s fourth showing commemorates the 10th anniversary of 9/11. With this presentation, Bertrand Delacroix Gallery is honored to pay tribute to victims and survivors of this tragic event.

grace, by Brooklyn-based artist Pietro Costa, is composed of concentric red neon rings suspended from a 20 foot ceiling, forming a swaying tower of light that serves as a memorial for the victims of 9/11. This ethereal tower is composed of neon rings held in position vertically without fixed points or knots, only by the simple tension exerted by four plumb bobs.

The morning of September 11th, 2001, Costa, along with fellow residents of Cobble Hill and Downtown Brooklyn, experienced a shower of paper floating down from the sky. Burnt, tattered and sometimes intact papers were strewn on the streets from the offices of the thousands of people who perished that morning in the World Trade Center.

Costa recalls, “After the attack, I’d been having this recurring dream – not a dream, actually a nightmare. The sky was raining paper. It haunted me and I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t keep making art without absorbing this experience. I knew exactly what the answer to my nightmare was: I needed to physically introduce this occurrence into the sculpture in a way that would memorialize those who were gone. I wanted to include an interactive component, something that the viewer could pick up and take away, just as all of us, who were in New York on September 11th take that day with us everywhere – even now, ten years later.”

Scattered around the base, in the form of a wreath, Costa places individual strips of paper representing the victims of September 11th; including their names, ages, employers and job titles, as well as where they were situated when they died. Among these are the names of the hijackers as well as blank strips representing the unknown quantity of the homeless and undocumented New York City residents. Visitors are encouraged to take a strip of paper with them. As they are collected, the strips are refreshed with a new batch.