Hugo Crosthwaite: Pierogi

Escape Rates Escaparates
16 October - 15 November 2009
Opening Reception: Friday 16 October 2009 7 - 9 pm

Hugo Crosthwaite is a California trained artist (BA from San Diego State University's School of Art, though lives and works in NYC). He has a complex mix of photo-realistic yet expressive characters that reside in spaces that are themselves a mix of specific localities (taken from photo-references no doubt), icons, abstraction, and just as often empty fields. It looks like he works with charcoal and/or graphite to model the figures and black acrylic paint to fill in the large zones of dark tones, though on reading his materials it seems he accomplishes it all with charcoal and graphite. I wouldn't be surprised if he painted a powdered charcoal for the blacks, as they are very intense.

The characters seem to be involved in different corporeal actions with one another. A reaccuring motif was of one grown character emerging from the crotch of another. This pseudo-birth, reminded me of Odd Nerdrums use of shock imagery, but also of Jenny Saville's tortured portraiture of women. He claims a major influence to be the Tijuana bibles from his birthplace of Mexico (short, often crude and sexually explicit comics). Sexuality and violence do seem to figure strongly in many of his images, though often the images are just juxtaposed in unsettling combinations.


http://www.pierogi2000.com/index.html

PIEROGI | 177 North 9th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 T. 718.599.2144

Blane De St Croix

Blane De St Croix is sculptor who makes sections of landscapes out of various non-traditional materials such as building materials, model trees, foam, flocking, etc.

A large work at Smack-Mellon, a more than one hundred foot scale model Mexican/American border fence snaked through the gallery space, has brought him to the attention of various other project spaces. He is currently working on multiple projects including a giant upside down strip-mined mountain at the Black and White project space down the street from my studio. I have been helping him occasionally on his current project as it is, like any good project, more than you can realistically do in the time allotted.

Blane sees himself coming out the tradition of landscape painters. Formally he uses shape, color, and texture to imply greater space.

He has an impressively short statement which I would like to emulate:
My work utilizes sculptural object, installation and drawing. Employing a combination of natural and industrial materials. I am interested in articulating humankind’s desire to take command over the earth --alluding to conflicts with ecology, politics, ourselves and the level of human absence and/or presence in industry. I often borrow from man-made elements and architectural environments and adjoin them with natural habitats, asking us to reflect on our precarious relationship with our surroundings.

http://blanedestcroix.blogspot.com/
http://www.blackandwhiteprojectspace.org/