A Sculpture in Transit:
Álvaro Urbano at SculptureCenter
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Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: TABLEAU VIVANT, SculptureCenter, New York, 2024-25.
Courtesy the artist and SculptureCenter, New York. Photo: Charles Benton
Courtesy the artist and SculptureCenter, New York. Photo: Charles Benton
In 315 CE, Constantine the Great commemorated his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge with an arch that still stands in the center of Rome. A hulking monument, a symbol of imperial power. What makes this structure particularly interesting is that the reliefs and sculptures adorning it weren’t newly commissioned; they were repurposed, taken from earlier monuments dedicated to Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. This deliberate act of appropriation carved the past in marble and rearranged it to serve the present.
Art historian Beat Brenk argues that this wasn’t just a matter of cost-cutting or convenience. Constantine, who wasn’t born into the aristocracy, needed to cement his authority. By incorporating imagery from Rome’s so-called golden age, he was inserting himself into a lineage of great emperors, reinforcing his rule through a visual language of continuity and power.
Some materials are inherently political. No matter how thoroughly they’re repurposed, they remain tethered to their original context, their past lives lingering beneath the surface. Spolia, as this act of reuse is called, always comes with echoes.
But not all acts of retrieval are about power. And not all monuments are meant to last forever.
At SculptureCenter in Queens, NY, Álvaro Urbano approaches the past in a way that is entirely different from Constantine’s. His exhibition TABLEAU VIVANT reconstructs Atrium Furnishment, a public sculpture that once stood in the heart of Manhattan. Originally installed in 1986 in the lobby of the Equitable Center, an office building in Midtown, this work by American sculptor Scott Burton (1939–1989) consisted of a semi-circular arrangement of green marble benches with onyx lamps that functioned both as a sculptural object and a site for rest. For more than thirty years it remained in place, until renovations in 2020 threatened its complete destruction. At the last moment, curator Jeremy Johnston intervened, and the piece was carefully dismantled and placed in storage.
Scott Burton, Atrium Furnishment, 1986 © 2024 Estate of Scott Burton
Now, forty years after it was first installed, Urbano gives it another life—but not as a pristine reassembly. He keeps the original layout but repositions its elements, exposing cross-sections of the marble. What he presents is not a fixed monument but a work in flux—an exploration of how artworks persist, adapt, and change over time.
Burton himself knew something about impermanence. Just three years after installing Atrium Furnishment, he died from AIDS-related complications. His work, like that of many queer artists of his generation, was at risk of being forgotten, lost to an era that saw so many lives vanish before their time.
Álvaro Urbano, studio image. Courtesy the artist; ChertLüdde, Berlin; and Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara, Madrid, and Mexico City.
Photo: Marjorie Brunet Plaza © 2024
Photo: Marjorie Brunet Plaza © 2024
Urbano often extends a site’s historical narrative by layering it with speculation and imagination. For TABLEAU VIVANT, he links Burton’s work to The Ramble, a heavily wooded section of Central Park with winding paths and dense foliage. Officially, The Ramble is known as a haven for birdwatchers. But it has also served, throughout the early 20th century, as a gathering place for New York’s queer community—a site for cruising.
Open yet concealed, The Ramble was one of the rare spaces in the city where the divide between public and private softened, where social norms briefly unraveled. Urbano follows the traces of these histories, drawing a line from Burton to others who have been erased or forgotten.
In the exhibition, a landscape reminiscent of a springtime forest unfolds. Magnolia and morning glories bloom; Jeffersonia plants emerge from the concrete floor; a half-eaten apple rests on the ground as if just abandoned. Vines twist and tangle, their branches sprawling outward. But none of these are real plants. They are sculpted from metal, meticulously painted to simulate life.
This artificial forest, frozen in time, reads as a kind of memory—a spectral echo of something once real but now only reconstructed. Like The Ramble itself, it exists in an ambiguous space between presence and absence, between the living and the remembered.
Overhead, a false ceiling of translucent panels flickers unpredictably—warm amber shifting to cold fluorescence, light pulsing in uneven rhythms. Shadows move across the ceiling’s surface: the scatter of leaves, the surface of a puddle, a butterfly caught in the air. The room itself seems unstable, caught between times.
Burton’s work was made of marble, a material associated with permanence. But nothing is permanent. Not monuments. Not histories. Urbano does not try to hold onto them. Instead, he lets them shift, resurface, become something else.
Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: TABLEAU VIVANT, SculptureCenter, New York, 2024-25.
Courtesy the artist and SculptureCenter, New York. Photo: Charles Benton
Courtesy the artist and SculptureCenter, New York. Photo: Charles Benton
Interview with Álvaro Urbano
Could you share a bit about your background and artistic practice?
I first studied architecture and design before transitioning to fine arts. This background, I believe, has greatly influenced the way I approach space and atmosphere in my work. My practice is largely centered on creating new spaces that draw from different moments in recent history. These settings are often influenced by specific figures—artists, writers, and architects like Federico García Lorca, Luis Barragán, Eileen Gray, Scott Burton, and Oscar Wilde—who linger in the space as if they’ve just stepped away. A recurring element in my work is the act of simulation, using sculpture alongside techniques borrowed from cinema and theater to tell stories.
Scott Burton, Atrium Furnishment, 1986 © 2024 Estate of Scott Burton. Photograph courtesy of Kasmin Gallery, NY
What was it about Scott Burton’s Atrium Furnishment that resonated with you?
I’ve been interested in Burton’s work for quite a while. I was drawn to how he created this hybrid object between sculpture and furniture. I like the way his sculptures hide behind functionality—at first glance, they just look like useful objects. But if you know his work, you start to recognize the sculptural language within them, like a kind of secret code made of forms and shapes.
With Atrium Furnishment, I was especially interested in how, at first, the piece looks cold and rigid, but its actual purpose was to create a refuge—a resting place for office workers inside the Equitable Center, a corporate skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. And then there’s the fact that this work was created during the AIDS crisis in New York. That adds another layer of meaning. It stands not only as part of Burton’s legacy but also as a memorial to the many queer artists who were lost during that time.
How does this work differ from your previous projects?
Most of my previous projects have been about reconstructing imagined scenarios, so this was the first time I worked directly with an existing object that already carries its own material memory. From the beginning, I knew I wanted this exhibition to center around Scott Burton. A big part of that was meeting Jeremy Johnston, a New York-based curator, through Marie Warsh (who is Rosemary Mayer’s niece and also runs her estate). Jeremy was the one who saved Atrium Furnishment from destruction in 2020. He did an incredible job documenting it—making detailed drawings and photographs, organizing its storage, and ensuring it was packed and preserved properly.
When working with Burton’s piece, were there elements you felt especially drawn to preserve? And were there areas where you wanted to take things in a new direction?
I kept the circular composition intact and made sure that visitors could actually sit on the piece—since it was originally designed as a space for people to rest, it felt important to respect and continue that intention.
At the same time, I wanted to offer a new perspective on the work. In the original installation, certain details weren’t visible, so I exposed cross-sections of the marble slabs to create a sense of memory being taken apart or reassembled.
Positioning the different elements in the space was something we had to plan carefully, so we made multiple sketches, 3D models, and mock-ups in my studio in Berlin. I decided to install half of the work in a slightly different arrangement from its original setting—to make it clear that the sculpture exists in a state of constant transition.
Your work brings attention to histories that are sometimes overlooked, particularly within queer narratives rooted in parts of the city that aren’t well documented. How do you hope your work might help preserve or bring new understanding to these stories?
I don’t really approach these stories from a strict historical perspective. I’m more drawn to fiction and rumor. I like when research unfolds like a chain of coincidences—when there’s space for emotion and speculation.
My exhibitions often begin with a ‘what if?’ I also tend to work with symbolism, and plants often play a big role in that. For TABLEAU VIVANT, I selected plants based on what I found during multiple visits to The Ramble, the historic cruising area in Central Park. Most of them reflect the beginning of spring, when blooming takes place.
Your reimagining of Burton’s work brings to mind ancient Roman spolia—the practice of repurposing older monuments to convey power, like in the Arch of Constantine. Though the context is very different here, do you see any parallels in how reusing sculptures embedded with history can add new layers of meaning?
Instead of repurposing a monument to create another one, I see this project more as an open space—almost like an amphitheater where people can gather and discuss the work and its future. The idea of creating a space where people can rest within the exhibition resonated with Burton’s original vision.
SculptureCenter
The history of this building—originally built as a trolley repair shop and later serviced large machinery like cranes—seems to echo through the way you recreate and reframe architecture in your work. Does the building’s past play a role in your approach to this piece?More than the building’s history, the exhibition was shaped by the materiality of the space—the constraints of its structure. We installed a light sculpture that runs across the entire room, acting like a dropped ceiling, which completely alters how the space is experienced.
At the same time, the proportions of the main space in relation to the Burton piece were a clear indication of the project's feasibility. But beyond the museum, this exhibition is deeply tied to the history of New York as a city.
Burton’s sculptures were built to last, yet they’ve faced preservation challenges as their contexts have changed. Do you think monumental artworks always carry a certain fragility?
I think even the most solid monument is still impermanent—there’s always the potential for it to collapse. Societies constantly shift their priorities, and even the most prestigious buildings can fall into disarray. We can discover a lot of essential truths by thinking about what we choose to value and what we overlook.
TABLEAU VIVANT is on view at SculptureCenter, New York, through March 24, 2025.