A few weeks ago, Rob Aaronson drove past the Ranch, a 26-acre horse farm and art space in Montauk. But it wasn’t Hamptonites on quarter horses that caught his attention. Instead, the local fisherman saw a dozen gargantuan shipping containers stacked on top of each other. “I didn’t like it in its environment, and I wouldn’t like it probably in any environment,” Aaronson says. “The ‘wow’ factor at first sight didn’t do anything for me.”
That 60-foot-tall sculpture by artist Matt Johnson, titled Meditating Figure, features decommissioned cargo containers as long as 30 feet, some appearing to hover diagonally in the breeze. And over the last few weeks, it’s become the source of much debate—and potential litigation—on the eastern tip of Long Island.
