
[From Hannah McCann at the Culture desk] New York's City Hall gets a little less serious this summer. British artist Richard Woods has covered two security booths outside the 1812 landmark building and doors in its main lobby with his signature, cartoon-like recreations of building materials--in the case of the interior doors, a two-dimensional simulacrum of the original. Sponsored by the Public Art Fund and titled wall and door and roof, the installation is part optical illusion, part fantasy, part flattened reality. Woods has played with revered spaces before: at the 50th Venice Biennale, he covered the Venetian Palazzo in exaggerated cobblestone graphics; at the Royal Academy of Art in London, he wrapped the interior with bright images of flowers and cockatoos. The temporary transformation at City Hall lasts through September.