Appropriated Urban Viewpoints, Recycled City Scenes
Laurence Asseraf
Julie Peppito, Wound, Mixed Media Installation 2004
New York City is a hub for media outlets, darling of advertising, site of urban planning gone awry, home to innumerable voices and a unique worldview. "Urban Decay" showcases artists who live in the New York City area and whose artwork is a response to their urban environment. Each of the ten artists in "Urban Decay" has either recycled or appropriated urban viewpoints, city scenes, mass-produced matter or objects, urban architecture or visual noise into their own take on the city. The group show presents the city in all of its wonderful and bizarre quirkiness.
The show, co-curated by Leah Oates and Laurence Asseraf, raises many questions regarding issues of contemporary urbanity. Therea Bloise’s paintings depict building facades of high-rise structures, architecture that is ubiquitous in crowded cities. Bloise transforms the skyscrapers into intricate beehives of everyday beauty. A.J. Bocchino’s digital photographs focus on the repetition of sensational newspaper headlines (Bill and Monica, 9/11, etc.) and the disintegration of public discourse generating mainly from the New York Times, which is the most quoted newspaper in the world. Jessica Cannon’s paintings depict abandoned F train cars that are bathed in artificial light and are empty of people. Cannon’s images imply a late night train ride and have a dreamlike sense of unease.
Samantha Mae Dorfman’s digital photographs capture storefronts in Paterson, New Jersey and peeling walls in Long Island City. Dorfman utilizes a documentary photographic style to depict architecture aging, before gentrification and in transition. Dorfman captures the beauty of these neighborhoods before they are neutralized for higher real estate value. Carl Eckhoff’s paintings depict growth systems gone awry and the accumulation and decay which is a constant in cities. Les Joynes’s drip culture series is an entropic view of landscape replete with semi-recognizable fragmented forms. Greg King’s work transforms the unintentional aspects of the urban grid and observes the random marks made on the urban landscape by a society interacting within a transitory environment. John Muggenborg’s large-scale pinhole photographs offer multiple views and vantage points of the city much like our memories of place and time passing. Leah Oates’ photographs of trash capture the over abundance of mass-produced objects and reveal a global culture of disposable matter in urban settings. Oates’ work highlights the abject beauty of such discarded items.
Finally, Julie Peppito’s sculpture and installation creates hybrid forms from the massive amounts of consumer goods and the scraps of refuse disposed of everyday in cities. Peppito bundles, collages and embroiders this excess matter to create unique narratives.
