In downtown Buffalo, where the skyline has held its shape for more than 30 years, visitors

usually keep their eyes trained at ground level.

But on a Thursday in September, anyone within viewing distance will have a good reason to

look up.

On Sept. 23, French performance artist Didier Pasquette plans to attempt a tightrope walk

across a steel cable strung between the two towers of the 23-story Liberty Building.

The spectacle, which still depends on final approval from the building&#8217s owner, was

conceived as a breathtaking launch for the exhibition &#8220Beyond/In Western New York,&#8221

a months-long showcase of art by more than 100 regional and internationally known artists at

more than a dozen venues in Western New York.

Related: History of falls rife with high-wire stunts

John Massier, project director for the exhibition and a curator at Hallwalls Contemporary

Arts Center, described Pasquette&#8217s walk as a symbolic act designed to draw a broad

audience to the exhibition while aspiring to the highest artistic standards.

&#8220It&#8217s a metaphorical, figurative act,&#8221 Massier said. &#8220It&#8217s very

much about inhabiting the moment. To me, this is what the wire walker exemplifies. It&#8217s

the great impulse of all artists to fully inhabit the moment so acutely that you can do

something that magnificent, that you can do something that sublime.&#8221

During a recent visit to Buffalo to scout possible locations, Massier noted, Pasquette

stressed that he was not a stunt man out to break any world records. He wanted, as Massier

recalled, simply to &#8220draw a line in space and walk on that line.&#8221

Pasquette&#8217s tightrope walk fits the theme for the ambitious exhibition, said

Albright-Knox Art Gallery Director Louis Grachos, one of the event&#8217s organizers. The show

is subtitled &#8220Alternating Currents,&#8221 a reference to Buffalo&#8217s ties to the birth

of cheap electricity, its often conflicted citizenry and its geographical location at the

confluence of so many waterways.

&#8220If you think about &#8216Alternating Currents&#8217 and you think about drawing a

line in the skyline and walking it, there&#8217s some poetry there,&#8221 Grachos said.

&#8220Not to mention the poetry of a French artist walking between the two Statues of

Liberty.&#8221

Grachos said event organizers are finalizing liability insurance for the event but are

confident that Pasquette&#8217s walk will take place. In addition to the Liberty Building, the

French funambulist also scouted locations for high-wire walks in Niagara Falls and in

Buffalo&#8217s Olmsted Park system.

Pasquette studied with renowned tightrope walker Philippe Petit, whose 1974 high-wire walk

between the World Trade Center towers has lately become the subject of renewed fascination. He

has performed high-wire walks in London, Paris and Copenhagen as well as with Cirque du Soleil

and with his own company, Altitude, based in Le Mans, France.

This year&#8217s incarnation of the ambitious exhibition, launched in 2005 as an outgrowth

of the long-standing &#8220In Western New York&#8221 regional art show and repeated with an

expanded footprint in 2007, will feature work by nine international artists in addition to

Pasquette. Some of that work, Grachos said, will remain on view indefinitely.

Other nonregional artists scheduled to produce work for the show include Korean-born

sculptor Do Ho Suh and British-born environmental artist and sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. Both

will install sculptures on the grounds of the Albright-Knox. The Canadian art collective

Fastwurms will produce a large owl sculpture, likely to be placed atop the historic art deco

building that houses First Niagara Bank at Main Street and Jewett Parkway.

The Brooklyn-based duo of Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry are creating paintings for

the exhibition based on images from Western New York media archives, including those of The

Buffalo News and the defunct Courier-Express, that explore Tarry&#8217s formative years in

Buffalo.

Outside Babeville on Delaware Avenue, which houses Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center,

Canadian sculptor Kim Adams will create what he calls an &#8220auto-lamp,&#8221 a car drilled

full of holes, more or less blinged-out and finally illuminated from within to create a

dazzling light sculpture.

New York City-based artist Lorraine O&#8217Grady is creating a performance work focused on

the border between the United States and Canada. Husband-and-wife team Mark Dion and Dana

Sherwood will create &#8220The Confectionary Wonders of Buffalo,&#8221 an exhibition that

explores Buffalo&#8217s architecture through its neighborhood bakeries. Liz Phillips will

re-create a sound sculpture &#8212 described as &#8220a sonic portrait of the Niagara

River&#8221 that she originally produced for Artpark in 1974.

&#8220Beyond/In Western New York&#8221 organizers stressed that the exhibition will remain

resolutely focused on the work of regional artists.

The footprint of the exhibition has expanded incrementally since its inception, growing

beyond the eight counties of Western New York to include cities such as Rochester, Syracuse,

Cleveland and Toronto. The show will occupy both traditional art galleries and extend into

such non-art spaces as the Hi-Temp Fabrication building on Perry Street and newer venues like

the Western New York Book Arts Center.

&#8220There was also a concerted effort to bring in performance, to address some

site-specific opportunities and allow for artists to select some specific venues,&#8221

Grachos said.