NEW YORK, NY.- Charles C. Bergman, Chairman of the Sculpture Advisory Committee of The Fund for Park Avenue, announced that Albert Paley is being the featured artist for the summer 2013 exhibition on Park Avenue. Thirteen of Paley’s monumental, abstract steel sculptures, created specifically for Paley on Park Avenue, are on display from June 29 through November 8, 2013, at sites between 52nd Street and 67th Street. Impressive in size and scale, these steel works range in weight from 2.5 to 7.5 tons with dimensions as large as 21 feet high and 40 feet long.

Albert Paley stated, “There can be few exhibition platforms in the world to equal the distinction, visibility and excitement of Park Avenue. I look forward to this installation as an opportunity to reflect the dynamism of New York, with sculptures that rise as high as twenty feet and evoke the city’s movement through their gesture and balance. Although these new works are not technically site-specific, I have placed each one where it can bring into focus the ambiance of the location. A horizontal sculpture will be situated opposite the Seagram Building, for example, accentuating the open plaza areas of the site. A pair of tall, vertical sculptures, one expressing its energy with interlaced elements and the other with unfolding planes, stand on either side of 57th Street, matching the scale and vibrancy of this widest expanse on Park Avenue.”

As noted by Patterson Sims, independent curator and member of the Sculpture Advisory Committee of The Fund for Park Avenue, "With Albert Paley's extraordinary transition from intimate work to large scale sculpture and his personal and artistic locus never having been New York City-centered, he has been an enigmatic and under-recognized figure here. With his series of sculptures created especially for Park Avenue, he firmly places his work and himself in the center of Manhattan. With an ambition seldom matched in the series of Park Avenue sculpture installations, Paley has created a new body of work that celebrates the city and the site's energy and takes his own fusion of delicacy, complexity, and monumentality to new heights."

“Parks has championed public art projects since 1967 and we’re thrilled to have Albert Paley’s artwork enliven Park Avenue with dramatic sculptures, sure to catch the eye of passersby,” says Parks Commissioner Veronica M. White. “Albert Paley combines his background in decorative arts with a strong sense of draftsmanship to create sculptures on a monumental scale.”

Over the course of a career that spans four decades, Albert Paley has completed more than fifty major site-specific sculptures, often working at architectural scale, including the work that first brought him national renown: the Portal Gates for the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. (1974). Other notable works include a ceremonial archway in Philadelphia; the Portal Gates for the New York State Senate Chambers in Albany; Sentinel, a monumental plaza sculpture for Rochester Institute of Technology; a 65-foot sculpture for the entry court of Bausch and Lomb’s headquarters in Rochester, New York; three sculptures for the National Harbor development near Washington D.C.; a gate for the Cleveland Botanical Gardens; a sculptural relief for Wellington Place, in Toronto; Threshold, a sculpture for the corporate headquarters of Klein Steel in Rochester; and Transformation, a ceremonial entranceway for Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

The artist is represented by Gerald Peters Gallery, which will open an exhibition of Paley’s drawings and maquettes of the Park Avenue sculptures on September 12, 2013. On the occasion of the exhibition, a 144-page, full color catalogue will be published by Paola Gribaudo, with a forward written by Gerald Peters and an introduction written by Charles C. Bergman. Upcoming exhibitions of Paley’s work include a comprehensive survey in 2015 at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington. Featuring more than 60 sculptures and 30 framed works on paper, the presentation will be the first museum exhibition to focus on the artist’s glass and steel sculptures. The exhibition is expected to travel to museums across the country.

In October 2013, the Peabody Award-winning series Craft in America, airing nationally on PBS, will feature Paley as their final Forge artist in Season 5. In the series, Forge artists reveal in their own words what makes their work – and the lives they lead – unique.