Earlier this month, a monumental, metallic spiral appeared on the High Line to coincide with New York Fashion Week. Commissioned by Bulgari as part of its Serpenti Infinito series, the temporary installation invited visitors to step inside an enormous gold coil titled auroBOROS: Urban Memory and Collective Dream . Conceived by artists Marco Canevacci and Yena Young of the studio Plastique Fantastique, the work transformed a stretch of the elevated park on Manhattans West Side into a walkable, portal-like experience.
The High Line, which runs from Gansevoort Street near the Whitney Museum of American Art to 34th Street near Hudson Yards, set the stage for the gleaming intervention. For nearly two weeks, auroBOROS was wedged beneath a raised building, its looping form introducing a moment of playful tension as the coil seemed to buttress the overhead structure. The title reaches back to the ancient ouroboros motifa snake devouring its own tail as a symbol of lifes continual cyclesa pointed nod to Bulgaris snake-themed jewelry line celebrated by the Serpenti Infinito initiative.
Walking the coil
Visitors encountered auroBOROS as an oversized, shimmering conduit, an invitation to move through its curves and momentarily inhabit its metallic rhythm. The works positioning under the building heightened the drama of the site: the coil caught the light and visually pressed upward, blurring the boundary between sculpture and the surrounding architecture.
From past loops to a U.S. debut
auroBOROS marks the first time Plastique Fantastique has exhibited in the U.S. While new to this setting, the studio has explored related ideas with earlier installations, including iterations of an architectonic gold loop titled RINGdeLUXE (2023), which has encircled bridges with the appearance of a kind of cosmic portal. Here, the High Lines linear path and layered cityscape served as a fitting context for the studios ongoing fascination with loops, thresholds, and public encounter.
Brief in duration yet memorable in impact, auroBOROS: Urban Memory and Collective Dream threaded Bulgaris Serpenti symbolism through one of New Yorks most traversed cultural corridors, aligning fashions seasonal spectacle with a luminous, site-attuned work of public art.
