For Three Minutes a Night, Times Square Becomes a Dreamscape

Since the start of June, something unusual has been happening just before midnight in Times Square. For three minutes each night, the usual blare of ads and LED screens abruptly halts. In their place a hypnotic light show: a cascade of Olympic gymnasts soaring through the air.

They flip and twist in slow motion across glowing pink trampolines, their uniforms pulsing through a kaleidoscope of flags, colors, and cultures.

This is Trampoline Color Exercise, a digital video installation by Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou. It’s on view nightly through the end of June as part of “Midnight Moment,” Times Square Arts’ long-running public art series that transforms the city’s most iconic screens into a synchronized gallery.

Shot entirely from above, the athletes become abstracted into a living grid—leaping, vanishing, and reappearing with rhythmic precision. Their movements are mesmerizing, even meditative—a moment of visual calm in the heart of Midtown’s frenzy. What first seems like pure abstraction gradually clarifies: Red becomes China, blue the United States, and uniforms dissolve into emblems of global flags.

“Trampoline Color Exercise was created over the past few years amid intense political and international divisions, and it now feels especially timely,” Zhou said. “I’m thrilled to see it presented in such an iconic, larger-than-life space, where it will be experienced by a diverse audience from all over the world. At its heart, the work is a celebration of globalization and a reflection on allegiance.”

Zhou used archival Olympic footage to build the work, slicing and layering broadcasts to create a seamless aerial collage. The result is both dazzling and disorienting—inviting viewers to question what they’re seeing, and why.

“We are thrilled to have Yuge Zhou kick off our “Midnight Moment” summer season,” said Jean Cooney, director of Times Square Arts. “Trampoline Color Exercise is playful, accessible and infinitely evolving—much like Times Square itself—with unassuming layers of cross-cultural references which feel especially relevant to this contemporary moment.”

Viewers can catch the installation each night at 11:57 p.m. through the end of the month. The final Trampoline screening is June 30.

The “Midnight Moment” for July will feature Charge, “a cinematic exploration of color and light” by Rosa Barba; Bianca Abdi-Boragi’s Cotton Candy will play through all of August.