Nine monumental figures from Bruno Catalano's Les Voyageurs series stood along Park Avenue between East 34th and East 38th Streets from May 2024 through May 2025. TheNakedNYC documented the open-air installation, its fragmented bronze bodies, and the suitcases that keep each traveler visually connected across an expanse of empty space.
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YouTube: Bruno Catalano's Travelers on Park Avenue
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What to Know
Nine Monumental Travelers
The installation placed nine bronze sculptures from Les Voyageurs along Park Avenue. Each stood about three meters high, giving the figures enough scale to hold their own against the avenue's buildings, traffic, trees, and broad median.
Bodies Built Around Voids
Catalano removes large sections from each figure's torso while keeping the head, shoulders, limbs, and luggage in alignment. The missing bronze becomes an active part of the work, framing the street and skyline through the body.
Suitcases Hold the Figures
Many of Catalano's travelers carry a suitcase or bag. These objects are not only symbols of departure and memory; they also help connect separated portions of the sculpture and make the fragmented body physically possible.
Movement Shapes the Meaning
The series draws on travel, migration, displacement, and the search for identity. The figures appear incomplete, yet they continue forward with their belongings, turning absence into a visible record of what movement can take away and what a traveler still carries.
A Personal History of Travel
Catalano was born in Morocco in 1960 to a Sicilian family and later moved to France. He also worked as a sailor when he was young. Repeated departures and changes of place became central to his visual language of separated bodies and retained luggage.
Park Avenue Became the Gallery
The open-air arrangement ran from East 34th to East 38th Streets in Murray Hill. Pedestrians could encounter the sculptures from the sidewalk and median, while the Empire State Building and surrounding towers became part of several sightlines.
A First Major U.S. Showing
The Park Avenue presentation was described as the first major United States exhibition of Catalano's Travelers series. Galeries Bartoux organized the project with support from Patrons of Park Avenue, the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, and the City of New York.
The Installation Has Ended
The sculptures were scheduled to remain from May 2024 through May 2025. The dates are part of the work's New York history rather than current visitor information; Catalano's official site documents his broader sculpture practice.