NYAB Event - Erica Svec "Dean Street"

Erica Svec "Dean Street"

Larissa Goldston Gallery

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Larissa Goldston Gallery presents Dean Street, the gallery's third solo exhibition of paintings by Erica Svec.

Included in this exhibition are six large-scale paintings that draw inspiration directly from Svec’s environment. Influenced by the detritus found in her Brooklyn neighborhood, Svec finds hidden beauty in the sidewalk trash, litter, graffiti, and spilled paint and tar that she encounters in her everyday life. Intrigued by the residual human energy retained by discarded items, Svec collects things cast off by others and reassembles them into small still lifes which she uses as the basis for larger painted compositions. The humanness of these objects is articulated both literally and metaphorically in her paintings as figurative shapes are expressed or implied by elaborate collections of items.

Continuing her commentary on over-consumption and environmental crises, Svec utilizes motifs that underscore the literal and metaphysical marks we make on the world. In Eyes & Thighs, a leg slips into a large puddle of anthropomorphized tar, which is spread across the surface of the canvas by shoeprints extending in every direction. In Head Band, an abstracted rendering of a lunar landing module references human debris left on far away planets and moons. At the center of the module is a painting-within-a-painting. Framed in gold, this still life elevates the trash of a littered sidewalk, creating a reliquary that honors the discarded and unseen.

Based on a mirrored table found on the street, Double Rainbow #1 and Double Rainbow #2 represent a familiar object in an ambiguous space executed from two different vantage points. Svec covers the “floor” of this indistinct setting with an intricate pattern that conflates the concentric lines of a meticulously raked Zen garden with the glittering spirals of fingerprints, reiterating the metaphysical energy humans impart to the world through the things they leave behind.

While Svec’s vivid, evocative paintings betray diverse influences such as the late work of Georges Braque and Audrey Flack, the result is a visual language that is uniquely hers. Drawing on abandoned objects and indexical marks of human occupation, the resulting works depict vibrant and invitingly dream-like alien environments.

[Imaga: Erica Svec "Eyes & Thighs" (2010) oil and acrylic on canvas 62 x 54 in.]