Vito Schnabel and Maccarone Gallery are pleased to present both new and past works by Vahakn Arslanian, opening April 2 and on view through May 2, 2009. The exhibition will feature several of the artist’s latest large-scale drawings, coupled by a seminal group of paintings and drawings executed since 2001.

Arslanian’s unending fascination with birds and airplanes, as well as a perpetual interest in spirituality and religion, results in the show’s title, Jesus Loves Captain Sully Sullenberger. Coincidentally Maccarone Gallery is situated one block from the Hudson River, where Sullenberger executed his legendary emergency landing this past January (a flock of bird’s being culprits in the flight’s demise).

The captain’s ubiquitous emergence into popular culture as a Jesus-like savior and hero provides an appropriately contemporary launch pad for an oeuvre that otherwise appears timeless. At an early age Arslanian demonstrated a propensity for shattering glass objects as a means of expression. He has since developed his cathartic destruction into a distinctive art-making practice without the benefit of extensive formal training. His prolific output of mixed-media works feature drawings and paintings of a specific, somewhat obsessive, fixed iconography harkening a surrealist sensibility—birds, candles, airplanes, trains, among others, are his habitual subjects. He further intervenes often by burning the picture surface, branding the material with an emblem of decay yet simultaneously revealing a layer of cultivated personal symbols and meaning. In finished form the artist deliberately incorporates and edits from discarded window frames and glass fractions to create a unique picture-frame for each work.