Masters & Pelavin is pleased to announce A City Sorrow Built, a group exhibition curated by Todd Masters. The exhibit is inspired by the final painting in Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire series, a romantic depiction of a fallen empire, titled Desolation. The group of artists shown include Timothy Paul Myers (Australian), Karl Klingbiel (American), Peter Buechler (German), Norman Mooney (Irish), Steven Katzman (American), Jean-Paul Cattin (Swiss), Jin Shan (Chinese) and Maya Kramer (American). A full color catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

The Course of Empire is a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833-36. It depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city. The final painting in the series, Desolation, shows the results of the city’s demise. We view the remains of the city in the livid light of a dying day. The landscape has begun to return to wilderness, and no human beings are to be seen; but the remnants of their architecture emerge from beneath a mantle of trees, ivy, and other overgrowth. The sunrise of the first painting is mirrored in this final painting by a moonrise, a pale light reflecting in the ruin-choked river while the standing pillar reflects the last rays of sunset.

Focusing on his interest in an artists’ ability to break boundaries through visual storytelling and innovative uses of media, Masters combines a selection of signature works by a diverse group of contemporary international artists. Filled with cultural differences, artistic processes and aesthetic traditions; works within this exhibition wrestle with complex topics such as the veracity of history, the nature of interpretation, subjective versus objective truth, and the ways in which objects and images from the past embody cultural memory. Though the show includes a variety of media and narratives based on a wide range of artistic practices and personal experiences, Masters’ amalgamates the collection of works by loosely referencing palettes, subjects and themes found within the imaginary fallen city of Cole’s painting.