Knicks on High: Tyler Mitchell’s Billboard Continues New York’s Blue and Orange Celebration

As New Yorkers continue to celebrate the Knicks winning the National Basketball Association championship for the first time in more than 50 years, the team’s iconic blue-and-orange colours take centre stage in the High Line’s latest mega-billboard, created by photographer Tyler Mitchell.

Time for a New Sky II, Mitchell’s first large-scale public artwork, features a solitary figure standing against the backdrop of a blue sky with wispy clouds, seemingly trying to pull an orange sky up and over the blue, perhaps as if welcoming the dusk. The work will be on view until early September on the billboard adjacent to the park at 18th Street and 10th Avenue, where it will be seen by visitors making their way into Chelsea’s Gallery District.

In a statement, a spokesperson for High Line Art said that the work reflected Mitchell’s “ongoing interest in bodily suspension and one’s relationship to the sky”, capturing “a tension between the natural and the constructed” that mirrors the High Line’s own status as an artificially created landscape suspended above the city.

Other installations at the High Line this summer include three sculptures by Patricia Ayres discussing the numbers associated with women’s fashion standards, prison and Catholicism, and a 2.75-metre bronze corn cob water fountain by Ximena Garrido-Lecca. In addition, Derek Fordjour presents three painted bronzes of Black figures including a boxer, a waiter and a burlesque dancer.

“Tyler Mitchell’s Time for a New Sky II offers an image of swept-up expanse that teases the line between reality and fantasy, natural and constructed, smoothing out the sky,” said Cecilia Alemani, Donald R Mullen Jr director and chief curator of High Line Art. “We’re pleased to present this gentle disruption to the built environment of Manhattan buildings and streets along the green cradle of the High Line.”

The Knicks clinched the NBA title on 13 June against the San Antonio Spurs, beating the Texas side 94-90 in the fifth match of the best-of-seven series. The ensuing celebrations brought parts of the city to a standstill, and continued on Tuesday when Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a “championship route” through the heart of Manhattan, featuring blue-and-orange signs bearing winning players’ names and jersey numbers.