ARTNET NEWS: Oscar Tuazon Resurrects a Lost Scott Burton Work for New York’s AIDS Memorial

Slowly but surely, Scott Burton, the late American sculptor whose work bridged high design and public utility, is receiving his due. In late 2024, the survey show “Scott Burton: Shape Shift” began touring the U.S. Now, a series of benches and lamps he designed for the piers of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, have been reimagined and will be installed in the city’s AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle.

Eternal Flame for Scott Burton, a functional sculpture designed by the Los Angeles-based artist Oscar Tuazon, will be unveiled on June 20. It’s the centerpiece of programming for the 10th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial in the West Village, the historic heart of New York’s AIDS epidemic.

The work offers a circular metal bench topped by an elongated pole that emits a beam of light. Tuazon is known for crafting large-scale sculptures using found industrial objects, such as concrete, timber, and steel. Here, his raw materials were Burton’s own. The Sheepshead Bay commission was Burton’s last public installation and was completed in 1994, five years after his death from AIDS-related illness at the age of 50. Consisting of perforated steel benches, wooden ottomans, lamps, and weathervanes, it decayed over time and was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A decade later, it was decommissioned.