AMAZE, VOGUE, ASCEND, FLOURISH

—ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS

October 11–12, 2025

Free and Open to the Public

Faena New York

Presented by

FAENA ART’S FIRST COMMUNITY COMMISSION IN NEW YORK CITY

Anchoring the immersive experience, is a larger-than-life billboard featuring original artwork in front of the new Faena New York. Free and open to all, the experience included complimentary skate rentals, daily DJ sets, live performances, and culinary pop-ups, presented by Chase Sapphire Reserve. 

Faena New York
18th Street Plaza on 10th Ave

A Culinary Journey by 

Francis Mallmann

INDULGE IN A GELATO ADVENTURE WITH

MASTER OF CEREMONY

LADY BUNNY 

MUSIC AND PERFORMANCES BY

SOFI TUKKER, RICHIE HELL, APRIL HUNT, MONDAY BLUE, KERVYN MARK, HEAVY PLEASURE, THE MUSES, STORMIN NORMAN, URSULA1000 AND JUSTIN STRAUSS

Amaze, Vogue, Ascend, Flourish was presented at the plaza next to Faena New York, right across the street where the legendary Roxy once stood — A place where roller disco, music and nightlife collided in an iconic celebration of culture and self-expression. Echoing that same vibrant spirit, this Faena Art installation reawakened the rhythm of a neighborhood that has always moved to its own beat.  Along with the rink, a billboard recognizing the impact of Marsha P. Johnson, Sykvia Rivera, Venus Xtravaganza, Octavia St Laurent, Willi Ninja and Pepper Labeija in the queer community.

Long-known for its vibrancy and culture, New York holds a place in all our minds as a city of icons, creativity, and endless reinvention. In this large-scale, hand-drawn installation, collective assume vivid astro focus (avaf) brought the roller rink back to the city with a site-specific commission by Faena Art.

Amaze, Vogue, Ascend, Flourish is the newest iteration of AVAF’s iconic roller skate rink project — first unveiled in 2004 in collaboration with the Public Art Fund and the Whitney Biennial as a tribute to the Central Park Dance Skaters Association (CPDSA). Two decades later, this radiant site- specific Faena Art commission transformed the rink into an unapologetic celebration of queer icons — past and present — with a devoted spotlight on BIPOC and trans trailblazers whose contributions to culture, activism, and joy have been too often erased or overlooked. Bordered by the Meatpacking District and the West Village the rink sits near a geography charged with memory.

The rink came back not as a relic of nostalgia, but as a living, breathing arena of joy, contemporary resistance, and radical collectiveness taking over the 18th Street Plaza covering the ground, windows and billboard above. This first major Faena Art project, an immersive experience where we further our commitment to celebrating the communities with the support of the arts, and our mission to serve as a catalyst for innovative, site-specific and socially engaged practices through the creation of collective cultural experiences. 

Presented as an immersive roller dancing rink, amaze, vogue, ascend, flourish transformed public space into a unifying dance floor, inviting all bodies to move, to roll, to release. This was an open call to everyone to celebrate resilience and connect through motion and rhythm. assume vivid astro focus has created a swirling dynamic work of art that lives through participation and collective energy, an intergenerational multicultural experience. Their visual language dazzles the senses with a riot of neon color, ecstatic patterns, and maximalism. But the rink serves more than just a space for fun and excitement, and avaf’s commitment is more than just aesthetic.

Pivotal icons like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Keith Haring, and Lady Bunny appear dancing through the rink alongside visitors, paying homage to the past with a visual archive of figures who have shaped New York City. 

amaze, vogue, ascend, flourish is a call to collective movement to roll toward one another in celebration, a space for everyone to feel bright, fearless, and full of radical joy.

Dearest New York,

We came to you in 1998 with a hunger for freedom and a longing for belonging. You were vast, untamable, and dazzling, and in your embrace, we discovered a place where we could dissolve and become. It was in Central Park, with the Dance Skaters Association, that we saw you in one of your purest forms, a utopia in motion. Black and brown skaters, queer bodies, elders spinning beside teenagers, strangers drawn into circles of rhythm, dance and laughter. It was a choreography without script, a democracy on wheels, a vision of what life together could be. In that swirl of music, sweat, and joy, we learned that roller skating was not only play, but it was also a practice of unity, a way to bring people together across everything that might divide them.

Out of this revelation, out of your queer nights and wild afternoons, our collective assume vivid astro focus was born in 2001. avaf was always plural, because you taught us that we are never alone. That identity here is woven from many voices, many colors, many bodies. We grew out of your queer communities, drag queens shimmering in club lights, ballroom legends commanding space, trans sisters marching and dancing, friends and strangers uniting in joy and resistance. You showed us that art is not only something we make, but also art is something we live, something we share, something that must always invite the public into its pulse.

In 2004, in a collaboration with the Public Art Fund and the CPDSA, we created our first roller skating rink. It was a gift back to you, New York, and to the people who had given us a language of belonging. The rink was not just asphalt and wheels, but a stage for transformation: where strangers became family, where movement dissolved fear, where joy itself was political. Skaters painted circles of love into the floor, writing with their bodies what words could not capture. That project was our first declaration that skating, like art, is a way to make community tangible.

Now, two decades later, we return to you with amaze, vogue, ascend, flourish, a new Faena Art site specific commissioned rink, fiercer and more unapologetic, rooted in the legacies that shaped us. This rink honors the queer icons, BIPOC and trans trailblazers whose brilliance is too often erased but who remain the architects of joy and resistance. It stands steps away from the echoes of The Roxy, where roller disco, queerness, and nightlife collided in a spectacle of freedom, and bordered by the West Chelsea, West Village and the Meatpacking District, whose pavements still remember the strides of revolutionaries, sex workers, lovers, and fighters. Their presence glides with us, their stories propel us forward.

To skate here is to honor them. To skate here is to claim joy as survival, to turn visibility into power, to embody love in motion. Skating is not nostalgia, it is futurity, a refusal to stand still, a communal vow to keep rolling forward together. Dearest New York, our wheels write you endless love letters. They circle your memory, they summon your spirit, they promise that we avaf, your creation, will keep loving you loudly, colorfully, radically. Always together. Always visible. Always fearless. Always in motion.

With love,

assume vivid astro focus

ARTIST STATEMENT

The democratization of technology has offered us the possibility of spreading and sharing knowledge—and that equals empowerment. Knowledge is power, power to unfold, fight and direct your own life. The world we live in nowadays is a world in which ideas and information disseminate rapidly and reveal themselves in this infinite accumulative unfolding looping process. You have the feeling of being devoured by this infinite swirl of information black hole. We are bombarded daily by an amount of information without any precedents. But the power of the Internet and its sharing capabilities have improved exponentially not only our access to knowledge but also our perception, communication and expression capabilities. This has given way to a new kind of human species, capable of absorbing and digesting loads of information at high speeds. A new cross breed between a human and a virus is born, whose essence is based on the idea of contamination, and the existence in different dimensions and bodies, commuting easily between them. Virus Homo Sapiens. Obsession, curiosity, generosity and anxiety are center elements in our projects—particular mind sets necessary to cover every single aspect related to the ideas we are discussing at a given moment. Space and time are multi-layered and multi-faceted—and people’s perception/experience of the world is finally heading the same way. Our minds and dreams are ahead of laws, politics, social codes, ethics and even technology. We live in a world of unaccomplished dreams. Nevertheless, we are also having a more vivid taste of these dreams today, because of knowledge spread. We have a better understanding nowadays of how we can have a better living. Unfortunately, there are a few generations that came before us that keep holding these views back. But they will eventually fade away. The pressure is strong, and they won’t be able to hold it for too long. For instance: does anybody doubt that music will be free in the near future? We know it will, and we know why it’s not still. People want that and that’s what we will get sometime soon. In our own way and in a very general sense, this is the core belief of all avaf projects.

assume vivid astro focus