“Grand Tour”
March 8 – April 6, 2005
Opening reception: March 8, 6–9 pm

Gallery MC is pleased to announce its forthcoming group show “Grand Tour,” featuring work by a selection of artists from around the globe: Anne Deleporte, Pietro Finelli, Yasuo Ihara, Dean Monogenis, Aga Ousseinov, Gorazd Poposki, and Yuh-Shioh Wong. The artists come from diverse personal backgrounds, range widely in age, and take an array of approaches to artmaking, but their works display remarkable formal and conceptual affinities. Several of the pieces will be created specifically for the space.

The works share a strong visual element and a playful use of images and materials. For example, Anne Deleporte, who lives in Paris and Brooklyn, covers walls or other surfaces with newspapers, which she then paints, leaving areas exposed so images remain visible. In her words, she “works with the appearance and disappearance of imagery.” At Gallery MC she will create a site-specific piece using the space’s large columns. Brooklyn-based Yuh-Shioh Wong, who made her solo debut at ATM Gallery in spring 2004, will also design a piece for the gallery space. She uses cement, Styrofoam, and fresco techniques to create fantastical assemblages that conflate nature, architecture, and decoration.

An idiosyncratic approach to landscape distinguishes several works. Dean Monogenis, another Brooklynite, will present two paintings that attempt to capture “the chaotic nature of the urban landscape,” while the Italian painter, critic, and curator Pietro Finelli depicts volcanoes and other natural forms in his bold yet elegant paintings, some of which incorporate gold leaf. The Macedonian-born, New York–based sculptor Gorazd Poposki contributes three marble slabs inscribed with images of the sea, placed on two-by-fours with some of their mysterious carved waves barely visible, as if the works are still in storage.

The Osaka-born, Brooklyn-based artist Yasuo Ihara, who works in a variety of materials and has exhibited widely throughout his career, posits a world of reflected identities in portraits painted on hanging fiberglass screens, based on media images. Aga Ousseinov, who was born in Azerbaijan, studied in Moscow, and lives in Brooklyn, will exhibit several plaster sculptures that build on work presented in his solo show at Gallery MC last fall. With lightness and humor, his fanciful and surreal pieces, which include a stylized car and automobile, suggest an enigmatic world.