Hugo Crosthwaite Gallery 1

Pierogi is pleased to present recent drawings by Hugo Crosthwaite. Included in this exhibition is a series of small notebook-size drawings in ink and wash, as well as wall drawings, that explore the artist’s process of visually consuming his surroundings like a predatory carnivore. He stalks images and feelings with a wryly humorous bent. He then recomposes them into a personal and improvised, carnivalesque story.

In one drawing a woman who has recently finished a load of laundry leaves her tangled hair hanging to dry on a metal frame; in another a coffee shop patron’s body is completely covered in tattoos; and in another, an elderly woman takes her rocking horse for a walk. These are images taken first from daily observation of the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn then regurgitated onto paper as a dreamlike fairytale that evoke a disjointed view of an unsettled realm lurking parallel to the safe, gentrified reality that we think we know.

“I let the act of drawing dictate my compositions, combining mythical and historical sources with contemporary provocations. Centerfolds, cartoon creatures, commercial facades and strange street characters populate my work, reflecting Mexican culture’s condition of colonization and its customization of American icons; all with the purpose of conveying a personal baroque narrative that resembles an abstract urban, chaotic sediment reminiscent of Tijuana, Mexico, the city I come from.”

Crosthwaite was born in Tijuana, Mexico in 1971 and grew up in the tourist-heavy beach town of Rosarito. He received a BA from San Diego State University’s School of Art, Art Design and Art History and currently lives and works between Tijuana, Mexico and Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited widely in Mexico and the US and was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art. This will be Crosthwaite’s second exhibition at Pierogi.

MATT MARELLO Gallery 2

Nestled somewhere between Early Netherlandish painting and the graffiti work of Keith Haring, Matt Marello’s new paintings and drawings are whimsical pseudo-iconography for a non-existent religion. Drawing inspiration from a hallucination he experienced at the age of 17, Marello explores the phenomenon of religion creation and myth-building, mining the intersection of writing, visual art, and apophenic constructions to assemble a chimeric confection that hovers on the edge of kitsch. Pierogi is pleased to present this new series drawings and paintings in Marello’s third exhibition at the gallery.

Marello is known for the irreverent wit and humor of his early video series: “Coming Soon,” “Sitcoms,” “Disasters,” and “Death Wish;” as well as more serious works like “The Pollock Project” and “Decline,” to name a few. In his last exhibition at Pierogi he explored the idea of apophenia, the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, as well as a link between psychosis and creativity. This led to a strange and murky world linking the destruction of the World Trade Center and Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic, “2001: a Space Odyssey.”

Marello has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including: “The Three Stooges,” Rome, Italy, and “Star Star” at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. He has received numerous fellowships and awards, including: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and Sonic Circuits X International Festival of Electronic Music and Art.