Opening Reception - Chris Esposito: Odd Balls And One-Offs
Friday, November 08, 2024 from 06:00pm to 08:00pm
Amos Eno Gallery
56 Bogart St
Infiltration of inorganic materials into our food stream, unintended damage to our ecosystem, and the man-made materials to blame are all the catalysts for this new work. With a purposeful irony these common materials are repurposed, through which their usage is expanded and a dialogue of material awareness and ecological fragility is created — as fraught as that conversation may be. Even though we hold these materials as "separate" from ourselves you only need to look around — to walk the streets — to see we are defined by materials — material goods we collect and the material trappings of culture.
The use of beeswax and lint in the work speak to communal by-products, created as the offshoots of life, made by the industriousness of insects or the fastidiousness of humans. It acts as a binder — exposing the strength and the weakness.
Living today has become an overwhelming endeavor, especially if you hope for some black and white — assets and liabilities, positive and negative — we have only the gray areas left, the in-between. So this work is presented in fits and starts, mimicking the inevitable indivision of our digital appetite for mediated information. The feeling that one cannot hold on to something long enough to establish more than an acquaintance before the next new "it" is introduced.
Cast offs and odd balls, one-offs with no apparent reason for being — fractures, dead ends, lost causes, and the misadventures of the malcontent — all exploration of the debris and its value (or lack of).
About the Artist
Chris Esposito is a painter and installation artist that lives and works in Queens, New York. He has exhibited locally and internationally and is one half of the art collaborative Damfino. His work is composed of meticulously chosen found materials often selected for their apparent lack of aesthetic qualities and then juxtaposed with sections of monochromatic canvas or impasto; a process of selection, deconstruction and reconstruction that invokes the cosmopolitan of his native NYC with its endless cycles of expansion and decay, and hope and despair.
