This isn't the London-based artist's first appearance in New York. In 1984, he had his first solo gallery exhibition in the city, and a decade ago he installed the public art exhibition Event Horizon, a series of 27 life-size human forms placed at the edges of rooftops in Madison Square Park. The forms' precarious positions, understandably, sparked some controversy).

In Brooklyn, however, he wanted to achieve something different. “Manhattan is the longest-standing social experiment in which coexistence somewhat manages to operate,” the 70-year-old artist ruminates, peering across the East River to the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan. New York Clearing, then, is a madcap homage to that.

New York Clearing during installation. Photo by Scott Rudd. © the artist.

Stretching across a concrete boardwalk, New York Clearing absorbs passersby into a serpentine maze, in which stepping over and ducking under aluminum tubings are the only ways through. Monumental in scale, the snarled aluminum hoops—which, when unraveled, span 11 miles—now freed from the constraints of gallery walls resemble the frenetic orbitals of an atom, or a painfully tangled necklace.

“This is an opportunity for people to get to know themselves through an invitation to move through space and time, which may be awkward and rewarding,” the artist says. Indeed, on the first day the sculpture was open to the public, Brooklyn Heights residents were rerouting their morning runs to examine their strange new neighbor while tourists snuck inside the labyrinth for classic Big Apple selfies.

Though the sculpture might spark joy (and social media love), the artist hopes to convey a more nuanced message, especially when it comes to climate change and other issues. “We’ve clearly poisoned our nest, and whether we will make it much longer is unclear,” says Gormley, who has witnessed alarming natural and social transformations firsthand through his extensive global travels. Inviting the public into this “paradoxical combination,” per Gormley, prompts visitors to navigate the boundaries between safety and entrapment—opposites you can choose to ignore, or confront.