NYAB Event - Susan Evans “Used Cars”

Susan Evans “Used Cars”

Crossing Art

This event has ended.

In the series “Used Cars” Susan Evans Grove’s allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the strange and unexpectedly beautiful surface of the previously so familiar automobile. The result on the aesthetic level of these straight on, reflective photographs is a creation of an abstract, surrealist environment that pulls the eye in and around its warping lines and colors. The result on the intellectual level is one of inviting us to reexamine our relationship with this iconic element of our consumer culture, which in her compositions is often reflecting how the natural environment contributes in their demise. Each image, furthermore, is archivally printed on a metal plate to reinforce this connection. The artist has named each work simply after the type of car that was photographed, calling to mind the status attached to the automobiles we drive, which effectively brings us back from a purely aesthetic appreciation to recognition of the specific subject and the importance of its choice to the artist.

Susan Evans Grove graduated from the School of Visual Arts in NYC with a BFA in Photography, where she received the F2 Award. Other honors include: Photographer’s Forum “Best of Photography Annual”, an international exhibit of women photographers in New York and Tokyo, panel participation for “Scandal” at Four Walls in Brooklyn, and an award from New Jersey Photography Forum Annual Juried Exhibit. Her work has been seen on the cover of Playbill, and in numerous books and papers and publications. She is in the permanent collection of the Jersey City Museum, as well as several private collections.

The exhibition will also include works from two earlier photographic series from the artist, “Illegal Sublet” and “Suburban Sprawl”. The first collection records the living conditions in Manhattan apartments, primarily Hell’s Kitchen. The second collection colorfully documents the phenomenon of the supersizing of American homes.
These communities lay on what used to be open space and farmland.

In all of her photographic work, Ms. Grove’s work addresses how we relate to each other and our physical environment. Though her images rarely contain people they are about how people live and bear the mark of the people who inhabit the spaces she photographs. The sensibility her work is profoundly American in that it focuses on issues of material possession and perceived status in American culture.