To Reflect Everything is a monumental sculptural work that investigates the complexities of queer utopia. Inspired by the 1986 Ajisai satellite, the large sphere is adorned with mirror-finished steel panels that both seamlessly and incongruously merge with its surroundings. To Reflect Everything appears poised for departure, as if preparing to transcend earthly boundaries. Reminiscent of a disco ball, the alluring surface invites viewers to delve into the realms of self-reflection and transformation, and to reconsider the urban environment of Washington Square. Park through distorted and fractured reflections.
New York, NY — Artist Ryan Van Der Hout brings a captivating new public art installation to Washington Square Park with To Reflect Everything, a monumental sculpture that blends the gleaming facets of a disco ball with the sleek form of a space satellite. Set to debut on January 9, 2025, and remain on view through March 30, 2025, this 7-foot mirrored sphere invites viewers into a thought-provoking meditation on the themes of reflection, connection, and the potential for change.
The sculpture’s striking surface, made up of hundreds of polished steel panels, reflects and refracts the surrounding environment in mesmerizing ways, offering an immersive experience for park visitors. As they gaze into the sculpture, they see themselves, the park, and the city around them both fractured and reimagined—splintered into unexpected shapes and patterns that challenge the way we see the world. Deliberate gaps between the panels introduce moments of darkness within the reflection, suggesting the hidden or lost elements of our shared reality.
More than just a visual spectacle, To Reflect Everything is a dialogue between the present moment and what lies ahead. Perpetually suspended between departure and arrival, the sculpture evokes the tension between the familiar and the unknown, offering viewers a chance to contemplate not only what is visible but also what might be waiting to emerge.
"To place a gleaming object that usually finds shelter in dark, enclosed, and loud spaces instead in the outdoors can be disconcerting," writes curator Renata Azevedo Moreira. "Yet Van Der Hout's To Reflect Everything unapologetically does it all, its expansiveness not to be confused with invasiveness. The sculpture is a radical attempt to queer simple definitions, functions, actions, and values. It lives and shines and occupies space, its presence impossible to ignore – even if, sometimes, one may disappear inside its gaps."
The installation will be activated through a series of performances that expand on themes of visibility, reflectivity, and challenges to public space:
Opening Event: untitled (to orbit narcissus) by Gino Romero (January 26, 3:00 PM)
"Muñoz describes Narcissus' story as revealing a new order, uniting man with god and man with nature." Drawing on this queer reading of the myth, this site-specific performance uses reflection and refraction as offering and invitation. Through movement and mirrors, the performance creates a dialogue with To Reflect Everything that fragments both performer and audience, searching for new ways of seeing and being.
About the Performer: Gino Romero (b. 1997, Miami) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores ritual, memory, and transformation. They are an ordained minister, archivist, educator, and consider growing up Queer and Trans in Latinx spaces as part of their education. Romero holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Studio Art from Florida State University.
A Queer anti-Valentines Day Healing by Dr. Ace Lehner (February 14, 2:00 PM)
Interdisciplinary scholar and artist Ace Lehner leads a performance/workshop on queer healing in the face of growing anti-LGBTQIA+ politics.
Inspired by decades of queer activist organizing centered on Washington Square Park, theories of disco, methods of cruising, and queer failure, Lehner creates a porous space of collective engagement with practices of self-evolution as a process of radical queer resistance and transformation.
About the Performer: Dr. Ace Lehner is an interdisciplinary visual culture scholar and artist specializing in critical engagement with identity and representation. Lehner's areas of expertise include trans and queer visual culture and theory, critical approaches to race and representation, modern and contemporary art history and visual culture, photography history and theory, and performance.
Artist Talk Presented by Future Fair (March 21, 1PM)
The exhibition culminates in a public conversation about art in public space.
To Reflect Everything consists of a silver steel base suggesting a lunar lander and a fiberglass spherical surface populated by hundreds of polished mirrors irregularly distributed around it. The project draws on the disco ball's history as a symbol of queer sanctuary and the satellite's promise of alternative futures, transforming public space into a site where multiple realities can coexist.
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A 1,500-pound disco ball in Washington Square Park is artist Ryan Van Der Hout’s way of letting you reflect – literally and figuratively
AM NYBob Krasner, AM NY, February 19, 2025 -
Washington Square Park Has Its First Art Installation Since 2017— And It’s A Massive Disco Ball
Secret New YorkCorey Fuller - Staff Writer • , Secret New York, January 17, 2025 -
This massive disco ball sculpture will soon be on display in Washington Square Park
Time Out New YorkAnna Rahmanan, Time Out NY, January 16, 2025 -
NBC Nightly News New York City
To Reflect EverythingNBC News 4, NBC News and Taxi TV, January 9, 2025
Daring to place a 10 feet high version of a gleaming object that usually finds shelter in dark, enclosed, and loud spaces instead in the outdoors can be disconcerting. Unwittingly encountering it while crossing a quiet garden on a sunny winter morning, when the white snowy ground appears to reflect all wavelengths of light that touch it, sounds almost like a joke. And yet Ryan Van Der Hout's To Reflect Everything unapologetically does it all, its expansiveness not to be confused with invasiveness. The sculpture is a hybrid of a disco ball and a space satellite, a radical attempt to queer simple definitions, functions, actions and values. It lives and shines and occupies space, its presence impossible to ignore – even if, sometimes, one may disappear inside its gaps.
When approaching the work, one might strive to find themselves, yet only come across their fragmented versions. Or would it be their multiplied versions? “To be a one at all, you must be a many and it's not a metaphor,” states feminist scholar Donna Haraway, pointing out that we exist always and exclusively in relation to each other and ourselves. This giant disco ball-satellite is a material refusal of anything's ability to only be one thing. It claims shape-shifting as the superpower of constantly becoming something else. It is a glittering manifestation of queer utopia.
To Reflect Everything consists of a silver steel base suggesting a cosmodrome, and a fibreglass spherical surface populated by dozens of polished mirrors irregularly distributed around it. The artist's main aesthetic inspiration is the satellite Ajisai, which has been orbiting the planet since its launch on August 13th, 1986. Thus, the work enacts queer desires to conquer freedom and acceptance here on Earth or in outer space, if need be. The multiple reflections reaffirm that bodies, be they human or anything else, are made of what surrounds them. This effort of multiplicity challenges binaries like self and other, private and public, what is hidden and what is shown.
Disco balls can reflect and refract not only physical imagery but also experiences, laughter, losses, and dreams. They introduce us to unknown avatars of ourselves, their light bouncing back and forth from whatever stands around them. This composite of mirrors confronts us with a multiverse of realities and storytellings, all versions of lives once lived or yet to live. It is a plurivocal screen with the capacity to capture the most unspeakable, wildest desires one may carry within.
In nightclubs, their usual habitat, it is believed that anything can happen. By transforming this familiar object into a spaceship and removing it from its shelter of carefree joy, Van Der Hout creates an embodied proof of Foucault's hypothesis that visibility is, indeed, a trap. That is true, of course, only if one believes their body's permeability can relate to an open space and to a hermetic sculpture at the same time. But by taking a step back, we can feel that this work is actually shouting, loud and clear, for everyone to be a part of it. The space of the disco ball literally is open to all – just “like a sparkling ocean,” says Black Studies scholar Jafari S. Allen.
So the invitation is made. Now you need to dare to accept it, and bring the party outside.