Iván Argote — The High Line, New York
After making a strong impression at the last Venice Biennale with one of his boldest interventions, Iván Argote now erects a monumental pigeon sculpture in New York’s High Line park. Despite its distance, this piece, titled Dinosaur, reaches us in a deeply personal way.
At the Venice Biennale, the artist, recently nominated for the Duchamp Prize, offered a dual perspective with two pieces in dialogue: a video depicting the staged abduction of a monumental statue of Christopher Columbus, moved through the streets of Madrid (where Spain’s far-right celebrates the national holiday nearby), and a replica of the statue, shattered and left abandoned in the Biennale gardens. Here, nature seems to reclaim its rights over this relic, symbolizing humanity’s conquests. Quite literally and symbolically, decolonization in action took on the air of a quiet empire’s fall. Already a sign of wavering, it cast light on the absurd, if not tragic, logic of our celebrations.
Taking an apparently different approach from his usual work, the artist unveils, for this project led by the High Line (an open-air art space that overlooks a street in New York from a pedestrian walkway), a dizzying five-meter-high aluminum sculpture of a hyper-realistic pigeon. Beyond its aesthetic power and impact, this sculpture honors the most familiar (and least celebrated) of urban birds, resting on a plinth styled as a simple extension of the sidewalk. As always, Argote subtly subverts public space symbols, questioning “normality” and reflecting daily life’s unquestioned assumptions.
First notable idea: it seems there’s no need to depict the exceptional to provoke awe. Through raw poetry and restrained humor, this monumentalization of the ordinary overturns the edifying role of art to reveal an equally profound perspective. Flipping established orders, reversing proportions, and celebrating what often goes unnoticed, it is now the pigeon’s turn to look down on us with an everyday calm. The ordinary flow of things, without noise or artifice, has already shifted. Set there as if it belongs, this sculpture doesn’t need sci-fi references to evoke another world. Once the masters of this space, we are now mere passengers, dominated by scale. The enigmatic title Dinosaur gradually reveals its significance.
“The name Dinosaur, says Argote, makes reference to the sculpture’s scale and to the pigeon’s ancestors who millions of years ago dominated the globe, as we humans do today. The name also serves as reference to the dinosaur’s extinction. Like them, one day we won’t be around any more, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will live on — as pigeons do — in the dark corners and gaps of future worlds”. This vision, both rational and symbolic, unfolds the silent drama of a figure whose eloquent silence and cultural layers act as a kaleidoscope of possible readings.
But here, everything relies on directness. Surreal yet hyperreal, this nature oddity could evoke either an ancient animal kingdom (the pigeon-dinosaur) or a future mutation (the pigeon-survivor of an extinct “dinosaurized” humanity). Iván Argote had already used the pigeon as a guide on an offbeat journey reflecting on monuments in his last exhibit, Premonitions, at the Perrotin gallery. Stylized, the pigeon appeared as a character along the journey, subtly reminding viewers that public monuments’ first “users” are often pigeons. This time, however, the pigeon’s hyperrealism is more impactful, avoiding any characterization to create an absolute repetition of reality. A pigeon is a pigeon is a pigeon.
An archetype, yet still anonymous, the monument becomes all the more intriguing; it is not dedicated to a particular individual or idea but instead invites everyone to appropriate it. It’s a subtle way to rethink the role of monuments in the city — not as fixed ideologies but as dynamic spaces for communal thought. The artist himself steps back in this work, even in its form, unusual for Argote. Perhaps this is why he strikes an entirely new emotional chord, achieving the feat of paying an anonymous tribute to the anonymous.
A tribute to the one who lives in most cities, who migrates and settles in them, embodying more than a native; a resident making this ground and this sky their own and contributing, with or without fanfare, to the life of the place they occupy. Through the pigeon, this work again celebrates something beyond the identity symbols of nationalism. The transnational and transgenerational pigeon invites us to think about all who pass through, each of us who passes. In this encounter, we are ultimately engaged with a place and a history that has the power to reinvent its geography.
Iván Argote, Dinosaur — From october 2024 to Spring 2026 — On the High Line at the Spur, at 30th St. and 10th Ave., New York
