Max Greis “Samsara”
Pavel Zoubok Gallery
This event has ended.
Pavel Zoubok Gallery invites you to a debut solo exhibition by New York artist MAX GREIS, whose collage paintings, video projections on panel and miniature dioramas explore the dual notions of technological and natural evolution. Utilizing collage across multiple media, these hybrid landscapes interweave awe in nature with themes of war, ecological ruin and the loss of native culture.
Greis’ miraculous, apocalyptic landscapes picture the effects of modernity on our shared terrain. Informed by a global spectrum of art historical traditions, his collage paintings are ominous panoramas constructed from a range of natural, industrial, military and architectural imagery. With their multiple suns, rising moons and shifting horizons, these fantastical worlds evoke the ethereal atmosphere of Surrealist paintings, while their floating, non-linear compositions are drawn from Chinese hand-scrolls and Japanese woodblock prints. Greis’ hybrid practice conveys a hyper-awareness of time that is uniquely contemporary, while still drawing from Old Masters such as Bosch and Bruegel.
The six video works that anchor the exhibition evolve directly out of the artist’s collage paintings. Utilizing clips sourced from documentary footage and collaged into unified moving scenes, these digital landscapes are projected onto paintings on panel. Merging the hand quality of paint with the temporal nature of video, these constructed scenes enable transformation and disintegration, creating a new vision of landscape painting. These works are further complimented by a series of miniature dioramas wherein Greis constructs and distorts historical narratives, inspired by juxtapositions of environment and artifact in museums of natural history. These intricately detailed tableaux conjure the illusion of spatial and cultural depth within mere centimeters.
Media
Schedule
from April 23, 2015 to May 23, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-04-23 from 18:00 to 20:00