Eric Corriel Studios

multidisciplinary art studio • immersive and interactive public art • art activism • digital/electronic art • nyc

Gyre

Kinetic sculpture, 2021—current

Top-down photograph of a collection of about 50 pieces of the artist's single-use plastic floating in a small black pool. Most prominently featured are two plastic 'Thank You' shopping bags.
Photo credit: Brett Wood

Gyre is a large-scale, water-based kinetic installation that floats one year of the artist’s single-use plastic consumption in a pool of water. Partially shown at Kingsland Wildflowers Festival, Brooklyn, New York

Top-down close-up photo of about 50 pieces of trash floating in a black pool. Most prominently featured is a yellow Polar Seltzer bottle, Bounty plastic wrapping, and an Amazon Prime shipping package.
Photo by Brett Wood

For the entirety of 2020, I kept every piece of single-use plastic I consumed. Gyre consists of a large, sandbox-like structure filled with hundreds of gallons of water and thousands of pieces of single-use plastic. This is the artist’s “gyre”—the one he created single-handedly—but would it be significantly different from yours? Isn’t it time we see what that looks like?

Photograph of top-down view taken from a top a staircase. On the floor below is a ten-by-three-foot small pool, one foot high, filled with water and over a hundred single-use plastic items. The pool has a black lining so the water appears black.
Photo by Brett Wood

We live in an age where each of the five oceans has its own garbage patch. These garbage patches, or gyres as they’re called, stretch for thousands of miles. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program has estimated that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.1 Most of us will never see this ecological disaster, yet we have all had a hand in creating it.

A small portion of Gyre was shown for the first time on July 31, 2021, at the Kingsland Wildflowers Festival, put on by the Newtown Creek Alliance in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Portrait photograph of hundreds of plastic items floating on a long plane of black water; items get blurry as they recede into a far-off distance
Photo by Brett Wood
On a gray wall hangs an 18-inch by 24-inch sign that says 'GYRE' followed by some text and a QR code underneath. On the floor, perpendicular to the frame is a one-foot-high black pool with dozens and dozens of single-use plastic items floating on the surface.
Photo by Brett Wood

Three separate 10' x 3' x 8' pools were filled with water and approximately 10 days’ worth of the artist’s single-use plastic consumption, representing about 30 days in total. The entirety of what was shown does not even represent 10% of the whole piece. A current running through the pool creates an undulating, kinetic surface.

Close-up, top-down photograph of about three dozen single-use plastic items floating on a black body of water. Most prominently featured is a white plastic 'Thank You' shopping bag.
Photo by Brett Wood
Tight close-up photograph of about 20 single-use plastic items jumbled together. Most prominently featured is a Bounty plastic package wrapping, a Tropicana orange juice bottle, and a circular take-out container.
Photo by Brett Wood
Another tight close-up photograph of about 25 single-use plastic items floating on black water. Most prominently featured is a Tropicana cranberry juice bottle, a lemon dill hummus container, and a Chocolate Chocolate Chip Häagen-Dazs lid.
Photo by Brett Wood
Small thumbnail image of Close-up, top-down photograph of about three dozen single-use plastic items floating on a black body of water. Most prominently featured is a white plastic 'Thank You' shopping bag.
Small thumbnail image of Tight close-up photograph of about 20 single-use plastic items jumbled together. Most prominently featured is a Bounty plastic package wrapping, a Tropicana orange juice bottle, and a circular take-out container.
Small thumbnail image of Another tight close-up photograph of about 25 single-use plastic items floating on black water. Most prominently featured is a Tropicana cranberry juice bottle, a lemon dill hummus container, and a Chocolate Chocolate Chip Häagen-Dazs lid.

I am currently searching for a 2,000 sq. foot cultural exhibition space to show this work in its entirety. If that’s you, please contact me.

A top-down photograph of a giant, football field-esque gallery space with a giant (2,000 sq feet) rectilinear pool in the middle, packed seemingly thousands of single-use plastic items
Rendering of the piece at full-scale

Ultimately, I hope to find a permanent home where Gyre can exist for the next 1,000 years—the time it will take for the plastic to fully disintegrate. In this way, generation after generation will experience the slow-motion interplay between the single-use plastic we consume today and the exceedingly long length of time required for its eventual disintegration.

Gyre is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, The Puffin Foundation, and New York Foundation of the Arts.

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