The New York Times | Park Life at Dusk

BY CAROL VOGEL

The Dutch artist Jacco Olivier visited Madison Square Park recently to “soak up the atmosphere,” as he put it. Then he went back home to Amsterdam, where he created three works as part of an exhibition of six outdoor animation installations that will be on view in the park — a six-acre swath of green between Madison and Fifth Avenues, from 23rd to 26th Streets — from Dec. 15 through March 12.

“I was thinking that instead of doing something big, I would think smaller,” he said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam. Suspended from trees, hidden in the bushes and planted in the ground will be screens that display romantic images of birds, a deer, a frog, a beetle and flora.

Mr. Olivier starts with a single painted image, which he then layers, photographing each stage of its making as a stop-motion animation. This will be his first public exhibition in the United States and will also include the image of a deer, poised as if it were about to jump into the woods. For the show, the artist has also produced his first abstract work.

These images will come to life at dusk. “They may be more subtle than some projects, but you’ll know they are there,” said Debbie Landau, the president and director of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, which oversees the art projects. But the conservancy wants to make things easy for visitors: throughout the park there will be kiosks with free maps of the installation.