Giant sculpture involving golden canopies now in Madison Square Park

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Take a first look at a new art exhibit in Manhattan, but to get the real experience you need to look up.

"I wanted to make a piece that dealt with the history of New York City and New Yorkers looking up," said Teresita Fernandez, the artist.

Consider it mission accomplished.

Roughly 500 feet of golden canopies have taken over Madison Square Park.

A series of metallic discs now hover 16 feet over your head.

This sculpture called "Fata Morgana", a mirage in nature, is the brainchild of Teresita Fernandez.

She explains the reflections in the metal really make this piece a portrait of urban activity in our city, a snapshot of the daily routines of the roughly 60,000 people who walk through this green space each day.

"It's a very democratic space and people use it in ways they're not necessarily told to, without instructions," Fernandez said. "In that way, it almost serves as a kind of stage or forum where people are very experimental and they claim the space very quickly, especially New Yorkers."

They watched crews load the enormous piece into the park.

"We think it's amazing, we've been waiting for it to finish and we've seen it in stages," one person said.

The sculpture is the park's largest and most ambitious project.

"Taking the art form from concept to fabrication to realization has been an extraordinary experience," said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

This will all be there through January which means you'll really get to see it in every single condition; in the rain, in the fall when the leaves change, and even in the snow.

"The piece appears and disappears depending on the time of the year, the time of the day and the angle of the sun," Fernandez said.

It's something that draws you in and if for only a few minutes, makes you stop, stare and reflect.