CURATORIAL STATEMENT

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This is a show about landscapes, kinda. These are not the traditional landscapes of the  mid-19th century Hudson River School representing everything in the view of vast lands without figures. Mountains, trees, water, maybe a small rock. I chose these five artists because of their unique relationship with nature. I needed a new word to describe the synergy created when bringing their works together on a small wall in the middle of Brooklyn: Grassphalt.

            Yoon Cho is an interdisciplinary artist based in NYC. She has been walking through the deserts of the southwest region of the U.S. for the past three years as she creates The Desert Walk Series. She takes photography and video of herself in 25 breathtaking locations in multiple deserts and creates a visual connection with biological life forms that are not visible during her walk. What results is an amazing mixed media presentation. Brantner Deatley paints in the mountains of western Massachusetts and just outside of his studio in front of the mountain range, he sees his three pygmy donkeys! How those adorable donkeys inspire him to create such intense works, you’ll have to ask him. His works such as The Range and Hill are intense with color and harsh textures. Ignored are the leaves and grassy fields. The best one is his “Landscape Painting” which is intentionally in quotes. It’s literal, metaphorical, metaphysical and just plain meta all at once and you’ll just have to see it for yourself. Stacy Petty’s art generally encompasses themes of decay, death and renewal. His paintings are about sculptures and used to include a simple horizon line but lately his backgrounds have grown into insane rocky formations with vivid skies and melting vegetation creating a new world to match his extra-terrestrial decaying sculptures. His newer works intersect painting, sculpture and installation. Chen Peng and Chunbum Park both show that even in the middle of a concrete metropolis, an artist still grasps onto elements of nature. Chen Peng’s works are based on the views from her windows in suburban Taiwan, China and the U.S. They relate human made architectural elements with the perseverance of nature. It is roots forcing its way through concrete, plants finding crevices in bricks, vines wrapping themselves in rebar. Chunbum’s cityscapes are sculpted out of fat paint and are an abstract and cubic view of nature as background and having to look at a prominent sky when you’re trapped in a forest of concrete.