Tamara Gayer
Happiness Is Easy

Mixed Greens is pleased to present a window installation by Tamara Gayer. Happiness is Easy entirely transforms the ground floor and first-floor façade of 531 West 26th Street with vinyl.

Tamara Gayer’s large-scale, site-specific drawing depicts three of the iconic buildings on the south side of Times Square: Conde Nast, the Paramount Building, and the Times Square Building. Together, they capture the abundance, color, and complete saturation that epitomize the area.

The installation is divided into two levels that focus on the most salient aspects of her chosen landscape—heroic, highly stylized skyscrapers cover the first-floor windows, while advertising icons envelop the ground-floor windows. The buildings represent power and the aesthetic history of the city while calling to mind the flux of city architecture. Advertising elements cull current and retro imagery including a silhouette of Michael Jackson and a graphic depiction of Air Jordan sneakers. In combination, the architecture and other signifiers become an homage and critique of media hysteria and hyperbole. Gayer has placed them together to reveal the message “Happiness is Easy.”

Gayer’s installation can also be appreciated as a patchwork of shape, color, and abstract patterning. We are hardwired to recognize patterns and Gayer uses this instinct to arrange, rearrange and repurpose triangles and undulating images to evoke movement and encourage discovery. The piece is a cityscape within a cityscape, aspiring to create energetic conversations about the space in which we live and the constant alteration of our environment.

This is the first in a series of outdoor pieces that Gayer plans to install in the windows of empty commercial spaces.

Tamara Gayer is an artist transfixed by the city. Suspended between the impulses of an image make and a builder she creates work that mutates from drawing to installation to video. Born in NYC, gayer grew up in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from Hunter College. In New York her work has been show at Priska Juschka Fine Art, Foxy Production, and Exit Art among others. She is represented in several prominent collections including that of the Museum of Modern Art.

For more information, please visit tamaragayer.com.


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