NY Studio Gallery is pleased to present Trash, a group show highlighting artists whose work is inspired by trash, garbage, refuse, waste and debris. Often considered aesthetically challenging if not abhorrently ugly, these products of human consumption are unavoidable elements of modern living.

Artists: Adler A.F., Kim Holleman, Michael Kareken, Stephen Mallon, Al Wadzinski

Curated by: Zeina Assaf

These five artists alter our negative reaction to this phenomenon by interpreting waste afresh, creating beautiful or insightful images, objects, installations and performances and giving form to the old adage: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Adler A.F, a German artist working in Tacheles arthouse in Berlin, is performing as the Trash Queen at NYSG. The work she creates from garbage maintains its own artistic value while developing a political-sociological conversation.

Kim Holleman meticulously renders three dimensional trash-scapes from an abundance of discarded materials. In her body of work, she addresses concepts of utopia, utilitarianism, environmentalism, and ideas about perfect form. Holleman examines how forms used in architecture connect to ideas about the natural environment, the sublime and the mundane, and our relationship to conceptual and physical space.

Recycling facilities are the fodder for Michael Kareken‘s large scale paintings. Giant piles of somewhat organized recyclables create their own patterns and cycles similar to those found in nature. The mechanics of these facilities sorting and moving their debris take on their own narrative in his work.

Stephen Mallon, an industrial photographer, documents the artificial landscapes and ecological footprints made by industrial plants. His photography is cropped to abstract the material and hence distort the viewer’s perception of the magnitude of the space.

Al Wadzinski creates zoomorphic assemblages using found objects of every material – valuable, mundane, cast-offs, delicate or impermeable, reclaimed from salvage yards, garage sales and alleys. A Native American, Wadzinski uses humor, intuition and metaphor to weave stories from disparate elements.