The surreal, giant figures in the courtyard at the High Museum attracted quite an audience on a recent Friday afternoon.
While small children popped in and out of the play structures, young performers with an Alliance Theatre summer camp used the creatures as a staging ground for a musical version of “Animal Farm.”
With onlookers snapping pictures, other visitors to the High threaded their way through the mix to check out a preview of "The Rise of Sneaker Culture," which tells the definitive history of the humble athletic shoe.
All this activity shows that the High Museum's plans are successful. Beginning with the installation of "Mi Casa, Your Casa" in 2014 and "Los Trompos" last summer, the museum has worked to make this courtyard, called Sifly Piazza, a more welcoming spot, a gathering place for visitors.
The newest installation, called "Tiovivo: Whimsical Sculptures by Jaime Hayon," may be the most charming yet. A quartet of abstract creatures, the elegant structures have a computer-generated smoothness, rendered on a large scale. They include a yellow-striped eminence that could be a rabbit; an aerodynamic pig (or is it a zeppelin?) with an orange herringbone pattern; a seated figure with strange, bulbous feet; a blue polka-dotted bell. The oversized objects have slides, stairs, hiding places and openings that encourage children to climb and explore.
They are the creation of Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, who has brainstormed toys, furniture, lighting, textiles, interiors and art objects for Baccarat, Coca-Cola, Benetton and many others. Hayon is based in Valencia and Barcelona, Spain, and Treviso, Italy, but his designs have traveled broadly.
This is his first major commission in the United States, and he is delighted with the way it has turned out. “I’m really happy about it, it’s a very interesting type of commission,” he said during a recent trip to Atlanta for the debut of the installation.
Is it sculpture? Is it a playground? Hayon said the creatures are there to satisfy at least two demographics: the children who are drawn to scamper in and out of them, and their parents, who might look on while relaxing with a cold glass of something.
“Children are really important players to the whole thing, but you’ve got to think of both,” he said. “Kids come with their parents. … It’s cool for them to sit down and drink something in the piazza and watch their kids having a good time. Everything comes together in a joyful moment.”
Hayon has completed other public installations in Europe, including a marvelous jumbo chess set with 6-foot ceramic pieces in Trafalgar Square, London. The High is helping draw attention to the installation with Tiovivo images on transparencies in the windows of the Arts Center MARTA station and Hayon-esque stencils on the stairs leading up to the piazza.
The father of two boys, ages 3 and 5, Hayon is aware of the need to make his sculptures as safe as possible. “There are no edges, no somethings that can hurt you. The slides are not so high.”
Also important is the installation’s capability of freeing young imaginations.
“When you’re a kid, you have a vision, you’re looking at things in a different way,” said Hayon, 42. “Some people don’t see a pig, they see a spaceship that will take them somewhere.”
This seems natural for Hayon, whose designs have a childlike quality. “I look at things in a fun way, in a dreamy way,” he said.
Previous to the Tiovivo installation, the High entertained its visitors with “Los Trompos,” a collection of 31 oversized spinning tops that children (and adults) could sit inside — a courtyard full of personal merry-go-rounds. “Mi Casa, Your Casa” established an encampment of geometric houselike structures that echoed the High’s outdoor Lichtenstein sculpture, “House III.”
Tiovivo (which also can be read as “merry-go-round” in Spanish) will be on view through November.
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