Magnan Emrich Contemporary is pleased to present the first New York solo show for Fabian Peña.

Formerly part of the duo El Soca & Fabian, Fabian Peña began a solo career less than one ago. As a solo artist, he has expanded on the use of unusual materials such as fly wings and parts to create entire environments.

Musca Domestica, the ubiquitous house fly, undergoes a complete metamorphosis during its average life of 15 to 25 days. This pest now thrives in all continents and climates, urban and rural, and has adapted to where people live. Flies have become a nagging aspect of civilized cultures along with the poisons, traps and swatters used to eradicate them.

For Grizzz (Griz/Gray), Peña transforms the gallery into a space of abundant convergence where found items from the city streets are accumulated into a zone of gray. By eliminating color and emphasizing commonality (paths of dislocation, decay and destruction), the space invites viewers to dispose their fabricated selves and ponder the unexpected landscape symbolizing the common fly’s fate in our world.

In addition to the found objects drawn from the urban context, the installation contains works fabricated in the artist’s studio using the bodies and wings of flies. The ‘gray zone’ also includes components from landscaping refuse, parts of fruits, and other found matter. The accumulation of disparate materials and the dislocation of scale allude to the micro-scaled world where flies and other insects thrive along with their human neighbors.

Fabian Peña Diaz was born in Havana, Cuba and graduated from the pioneering Superior Institute of Art (ISA) and came to the U.S. in 2004. Most recent exhibitions include Killing Time, Exit Art, NY and Cuba: Artists Experience Their Country, Hunterdon Museum, New Jersey. With Magnan Emrich Contemporary Peña sold his first body of work as a solo artist, Sobre la Imposibilidad de Almacenar el Alma, to The West Collection. He had his first solo gallery show with Bernice Steinbaum in Miami in the Spring of 2008. The artist currently lives in Miami.