NY Studio Gallery is pleased to present Ode to Odin, works by Ernest Concepcion. With an underground reputation for rendering pastoral, warring landscapes peopled by meticulous caricatures of high-density sci-fi populations on canvas, Ernest Concepcion boldly moves into in a new series of aluminum paintings that focus on a single event—the detonation of the atomic bomb. In this new body of work, Concepcion studies NY Times reporter William L. Laurence’s fetishization of the effects of nuclear warfare and testing. Paid off by the CIA to underreport the colossal devastation of the American atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Laurence reported in 1945 how “watching it as it was being fashioned into a living thing, so exquisitely shaped that any sculptor would be proud to have created it, one . . . felt oneself in the presence of the supranatural.” Concepcion dares to suggest as much in a series of enamel paintings of the (in)famous mushroom cloud exploding with color.

In his 2006 painting Ode to Odin, Concepcion captures the primary symbols of war: sex, greed and strife. He begins by depicting colorful idyllic landscapes, using acrylic or oil paint which, following a period of one to three months, he aggressively tags the surface of with Sharpie pens. Miniscule figures and outer-space hybrids find themselves trapped in an endless nightmare of battle. He breaks away from the imposed linearity of modern comics, overlapping, instead, varying scenes in order to suggest that such caricatures share the same space of the viewer.

Recipient of the Reality Gallery American Slide-All 2009: Solo Exhibition at NY Studio Gallery