Public Art Fund Summer Season Serves Hot Dogs and Abstraction

NEW YORK — The Public Art Fund’s summer season will include pots, pans and hot dogs.

Three exhibitions are planned across the city, with the first, “Erwin Wurm: Hot Dog Bus,” opening June 9 at Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo.

With his “Hot Dog Bus,” Wurm, an Austrian sculptor, is re-imagining a past work, “Curry Bus,” a vintage yellow Volkswagen modified with a bloated and bulbous exterior and a counter space that resembles that of a food truck. Free hot dogs will be served from the counter throughout the summer.

The second exhibition, “Tauba Auerbach: Flow Separation,” involves the modification of another kind of vehicle: a boat. In her first U.S. public art commission, Auerbach, a New York-based visual artist known for abstract pieces, will paint the exterior of the John J. Harvey Fireboat, a 1930s-era craft whose long career has included pumping water to firefighters at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks. Auerbach will employ designs inspired by World War I-era “dazzle camouflage,” which used contrasting geometric shapes and colors to disguise a ship’s size, speed and direction.

The painted fireboat will visit docks around New York Harbor starting July 1, and will offer free, timed trips to the public. The project comes during the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

Like Wurm’s exhibition, the final work of the season, “B. Wurtz: Kitchen Trees,” also relates to food. Wurtz, whose past work has included experimentation with common materials, will create five new sculptures for display in City Hall Park in Manhattan. The sculptures will take the form of trees, and will be created using common kitchen items including colanders, pots and pans. The exhibition will open Aug. 7. It is the first public commission of the sculptor’s career, despite his decades-long presence in New York.

The concept of the season is to “take aspects of the everyday experience and how we interact with our environment and our city and transform them into platforms for making art,” Nicholas Baume, the fund’s director and chief curator, said in a phone interview. “It’s really wonderful when you can see and experience the city through the eyes of an artist.”