Zaq Landsberg

Reclining Liberty

June 8 - June 24

Opens June 6pm - 8pm

Red Hook, Brooklyn - Andrew Logan Projects is pleased to present Zaq Landsberg’s Reclining Liberty, in her return to New York City after a year on display in Liberty State Park, New Jersey. Deftly maneuvering the 25 foot long, 2,000 pound statue of Lady Liberty in a Reclining Buddha pose, into the Red Hook gallery space, Reclining Liberty will appear as she never has before, indoors, like a ship in a bottle.

Viewers will be able to touch, climb, sit atop, lean up against the figure, and interact with the monument at a human level, like her previous exhibitions in Morningside Park and Liberty State Park, but will also get a brief, rare view of the piece before and during the refinishing process enroute to her next destination (location to be announced on June 15). The piece will move into the gallery as is, weathered, worn and burnished by hundreds of thousands of hands over the past year.

Reclining Liberty, is a 25-foot-long mashup of the Statue of Liberty and the giant reclining Buddha statues of Asia. The piece, coated in plaster resin and finished with copper paint and an oxidizing acid, the patina mimics the actual Statue of Liberty.

Originally installed in Morningside Park in Harlem, in April 2021, it was instantly popular with park goers, and got picked up by local and international news outlets, and went viral on social media. Many gatherings, events, and moments have happened around the statue, which has become a landmark and quasi-mascot for the neighborhood. Reclining Liberty was formally the stage/backdrop for festivals, youth theater pieces and several musical performances. The piece was adorned with candles during Christmas Tree lighting event, school groups regularly visit it, a Buddist adorned the piece in flowers and incense and performed a funeral rite ceremony for a relative overseas, people photograph their dogs (and cats) on top of it, hold kids birthday parties next to it, etc.

In May 2022, the piece was relocated to Liberty State Park in Jersey City, in front of the Landing for the Ferries to Liberty Island. The piece saw literally boat loads of viewers, hundreds of thousands of tourists and locals in the past year. The piece has been so popular that there were regularly lines of people waiting their turn to take a picture with it.

Zaq Landsberg is a NYC-based artist. He specializes in large scale, site-specific sculptures, and public art. Much of his work involves things that look like other things.

He has exhibited solo shows with the NYC Parks Department, with chashama (NYC), at CUAC (Salt Lake City, Utah), La Ene, (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Pehr Space (LA).

His work has shown in group exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY), Franconia Sculpture Park, (Shafer, MN), CCK, (Buenos Aires, Argentina), MALBA, (Buenos Aires), Bronx Community College (NY), Figment Festival (Governors Island, NY), and others.

He was awarded a NYC Parks Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award in 2020, a UMEZ Arts Engagement Grant and LMCC Creative Engagement Grant (2020), NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Sculpture in 2017, the Art in the Parks: UNIQLO Park Expressions Grant and a More Art Engaging Artist Fellowship in 2018. He was an artist-in-residence with the LMCC Workspace Program 2019-2020, and Sculpture Space (Utica, NY) in 2012.

His antics have been covered in more than 40 countries in more than 27 languages, including Artnet news, Time Out NY, Vice, NY Daily News, The Believer, PEOPLE Magazine, Clarín (Argentina), ARTE (France), Blouin Art Info, Gothamist, KSL Salt Lake City, WGN Radio, NY Magazine, Fox News, The Daily Mail, among others.

He was born in Los Angeles, and holds a BFA from NYU. He is of Chinese and Jewish descent.

NEWS for Zaq Landsberg

The Washington Post

Public art project "Reclining Liberty" reimagines Statue of Liberty, Dick Brennan, CBS New York News, 6/29/2022

Arts in the City October 2021, Donna Hanover, CUNY TV, 10/2021

The Get Out, Jennifer Vanasco, All of It, WNYC 5/13/2021

RTVi (Russian Language), Anastasiia Chumakova, 6/17/2021

Fuji TV (Japanese Language), Hunter Hoysradt,

Selected Print and Digital Media:

5 Things to Do on Memorial Day Weekend, Melissa Smith, The New York Times, 5/27/2021

Lady Liberty Seems to Want You to Draw Her Like One of Your French Girls, Valeria Ricciulli, Curbed/NYMag.com, 5/18/2021

Lady Liberty is Currently Relaxing at a Park across the Hudson, Anna Rahmanan, Time Out New York, 5/26/2022