Opening Tonight!
The City of Alexandria will unveil its newest public art installation, I Love You, in Alexandria’s Waterfront Park (1 Prince St.) this evening starting at 5:30 pm. This new temporary installation by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt of R&R STUDIOS (@rrstudiosmiami) is the fourth in the Site See: New Views in Old Town annual public art series. The installation will be on view through November 2022.
Power of Public Art
Commissioned to create an original installation for Waterfront Park in Old Town, Behar and Marquardt focused on the community-building possibilities of public art. I Love You captures public imagination in a celebration of friendship and camaraderie in the heart of Alexandria.
The installation features the words “I Love You” illuminated in pink neon lights. Mounted 15 feet high, the scripted letters will bathe viewers in a soft pink hue. Below, a hand-painted ground mural of a pink and white carpet will define the space as an open room welcoming everyone. It’s an unexpected and luminous contemporary social space in the heart of Old Town that beckons visitors to get lost for a few moments in this fictional realm.
“It is an instant landmark that brings people together with a simultaneously universal and personal message.”
R&R STUDIOS
Site See: New Views in Old Town
Site See is a temporary public art series that highlights Waterfront Park as a civic space. This installation follows Mark Reigelman’s 2021 Groundswell, Olalekan Jeyifous’s 2020 Wrought, Knit, Labors, Legacies and SOFTlab’s 2019 Mirror Mirror installation.
R&R STUDIOS was selected to create this site-specific artwork by a community task force (including Principle Gallery Director, Clint Mansell) with approval from the Alexandria Commission for the Arts.
Visitors can see I Love You at Waterfront Park from 5 am to 10 pm daily starting Friday, March 25th. The artwork will remain on view until November 2022.
About the Artists
R&R Studios, the collaborative office of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt is a multidisciplinary practice weaving together visual arts, architecture, design and the city. Celebrated, as one critic put it “as architects of hope” their works propose encounters of stories and spaces, which alternate between the personal and the public, the quotidian and the extraordinary, the poetical and the political. R&R Studios works erase boundaries between art and life and suggest “imaginary solutions” for a better world.
Rosario and Roberto are known for creating social sculptures for public pleasure. All together Now in downtown Denver, the biggest M in the world in Miami, The Living Room, their iconic Miami home turned inside out; Public Squares in Mexico DF and Copenhagen and most recently Besame Mucho their “super billboard” at Coachella Music and Arts Festival 2016 all suggest a world of possibilities were the fantastic becomes part of everyday life.
Their award winning practice has been published in over 250 publications worldwide and exhibited in solo and group shows in Museums, Institutions and Galleries in America and Europe. They have have received American Institute of Architects awards and American for the Arts selected their projects among the best Public Art of 2007 and 2013.
Rosario and Roberto have known each other since childhood, received Diplomas in Architecture from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario in Argentina and later study at the legendary Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City. Roberto has been a Visiting Artist at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles and a Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Cornell University and together with Rosario Visiting Artists at the American Academy in Rome. In 2007 they published The Peace Project, in 2011 and 2013, M, The Living Room and Museum Works, the first three volumes of R&R Studios “Incomplete Works”. Roberto Behar & Rosario Marquardt currently teach at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
Follow the City of Alexandria Office of the Arts (@alexartsoffice) and the Alexandria Commission for the Arts (@alexandriaartscommission) on Instagram for updates. Make your way to Waterfront Park to view the new installation, snap some photos, and don’t forget to use #iloveyoualx and #artsALX on your posts!
Principle Gallery 