CITYist

Bjoern Meyer-Ebrecht. Tent, 2007.

Barbed wire, tired billboards, taped together tents, inky black brick vortexes, and shadowy moons. These are a few of the elements that will explore the tension between utopic ideals and a dystopic reality at the Utopia / Dystopia show that opens Friday at STOREFRONT gallery in Brooklyn.

New York based artist Bjorn Meyer-Ebrecht submits large scale ink drawings of architecture in post-war Germany. The empty buildings are meant to portray an absence of history, and the thoughtfully taped together disjointed sections further evoke a disorientating, empty feel.

Erik Benson, who paints with acrylic on glass, lets it dry, then scrapes strips of the paint from the surface and reincorporates them onto a new canvas. In the piece chosen for this exhibit those paint strips peel from a desolate billboard between a dying tree and a flat grey sky.

The painterly landscape projects of Susanna Heller, Greg Kwiatek and Michael Pegau bring color and energy to the selection, from quick, energetic brushstrokes of river and skyline to magical evening skies to photo-precise southwestern desert rock formations. These natural utopias give curatorial balance the bleak urban images, leaving a yearning for the out-of-doors that any long-term city dweller knows well.

Josette Urso. Bushwick Rain Snow Rain, 2009.

Susanna Heller. Meadowlands early March, 2010.

Erik Benson. Billboard, 2010.

All images courtesy STOREFRONT gallery.