Black & White Project Space, Brooklyn, NY is proud to introduce Mountain Strip, a new site-specific installation by the winner of the 2009 Black & White Project Space Prize, Blane De St. Croix.

Blane De St. Croix’s work presents a unique combination of important social issues with poetic artistry. De St. Croix’s recent body of work can be seen as an ongoing investigation into the geopolitical landscape through the physical forms and systems found within the natural world. Using large-scale installations that utilize architectural space in a distinct, powerful and imposing manner, De St. Croix examines the effects of mankind on the environment, and the ensuing man-made forms and systems.

Mountain Strip marks a new step for De St. Croix’s attempts at recreating elements of the natural world. The research for the project involved travel to abandoned and active strip mines in West Virginia, interviews with anti strip mining activists, regional green organizations, the child services department in the area, working miners as well as local residents. Extensive documentation was done through on the ground activities and an aerial fly over of the strip mines. The research trip culminated on the top of Kayford Mountain, an extremely heavily mined area, where De St. Croix interviewed Larry Gibson whose last stand against the strip mining companies has won him a recent CNN hero’s award.

For the exhibition, De St. Croix quite literally builds a mountain upside down, referring to the strip mining process of mountain top removal and filling of the valleys, definitively flatting the land and stripping it of all its resources and sustainability. The massive sculpture, a monumental miniaturized landscape, dynamically cuts through the exterior exhibition space spilling into the interior gallery, while painstakingly reconstructing the topography of a selected section of the Kayford Mountain Ridge top in West Virginia as both a monument and memorial to the land. The installation runs over forty feet in length and towers above the exterior walls as it climbs up twenty-two feet high. Additionally, in the interior space numerous painstakingly detailed ink drawings will be on view as well as extensive research documentation in support of the project.

Blane De St. Croix is a contemporary artist who works in sculptural objects, installation and drawing. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally in venues that include Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; the New York Center for Art and Media Studies; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Djerassi Sculpture Park, Woodside, California; South Florida Art Center, Miami Beach; Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri; and others. De St. Croix has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Selected awards include A Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant; Black and White Project Space Prize; a regional National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Fellowship in sculpture; South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artist. He currently lives and works in both South Florida and Brooklyn, New York.

SUPPORTING PROGRAMS: lecture and panel discussion to be announced.