Tag Archives: joseph gross gallery

Joseph Gross Gallery Presents Cecil: A Love Story By Joseph Grazi

Mufasa By Joseph Grazi
Mufasa By Joseph Grazi: Taxidermy Bats, Dried Butterflies and Stone Sculpture on Wood Mounted in Plexiglass (All Photos By Gail)

Writing this rad blog has been an excellent way to discover and start to follow the careers of many cool and talented local artists, one of whom is Joseph Grazi, who creates fresh artworks by mixing taxidermy with classic statuary, juxtaposed with pristine colored pencil and graphite renderings, and giving the result a slight twist in perspective. Joseph Gross Gallery is currently hosting Cecil: A Love Story, Grazi’s latest body of work, which is a multimedia exhibition that examines the public’s erratic moral compass in the wake of highly publicized tragedies. Continue reading Joseph Gross Gallery Presents Cecil: A Love Story By Joseph Grazi

Art By Chad Wys at The Joseph Gross Gallery

Sculpture by Chad Wys

All Photos By Gail

Multidisciplinary artist, Chad Wys has some really fantastic work in  Not The Sum of Its Parts, Just The Parts, up now at the Joseph Gross Gallery. The two person show (which also includes works by Jesse Draxler) examines the variables of abstraction, conceptualism, and mark­making. In this exhibit, Wys rips apart and questions the use of traditional arts materials, rediscovering and reevaluating the limits of the surface.

Sculpture by Chad Wys

Painting by Chad Wys

The title of the show is a reactionary statement against the Aristotelian philosophy that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  Rather, the title attempts to highlight, in a multi­layered approach, that each part is essential, individual, unique, and not­ to­ be overlooked in its contribution to the “whole.” Both artists utilize this principle in their practice.

Paintings by Chad Wys

Chad Wys is interested in manipulating found objects – the more in a state of depreciation, the better – he adds new life, meaning and function to existing materials and products, adding to the object’s history and its journey. Throughout his work he has maintained a longstanding fascination with the ideals of conceptualism. Informed by Dadaism and minimalism as well as post­modernist philosophy, Wys’ work examines visuality, from images and objects to decorations and art, and how the reproduction of these materials influence our visual experience.

Painting by Chad Wys

Not The Sum Of Its Parts, Just The Parts, Featuring the Works of  Chad Wys, will be on Exhibit Through October 1st, 2016 at Joseph Gross Gallery, Located at 548 W 28th Street, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

Paintings by Chad Wys

Pink Thing of The Day: It’s Knot a Bike By Sergio Garcia

Knot a Bike
All Photos By Gail

Sergio Garcia’s tiny sculpture under a bell jar, cleverly entitled It’s Knot a Bike, was photographed at the Joseph Gross Gallery in the Chelsea Gallery District, where it was part of their Winter Group Show.

Knot a Bike Detail

Here it is in closer detail. See more of his cool work at the link above!

Really Bitchen Winter Group Show at Joseph Gross Gallery

Francesco Locastro Truth In Artifice (Verte En Artifice)
Francesco Lo Castro, Truth In Artifice (All Photos By Gail)

One of our favorite Chelsea Gallery discoveries of 2015 is the Joseph Gross Gallery, where we got turned on to cool and creative artists like Sebastian Wahl and the ridiculously hot Joseph Grazi, among others. Continue reading Really Bitchen Winter Group Show at Joseph Gross Gallery

James Charles Monstro Eyegasmica at Joseph Gross Gallery

Monstro Eyegasmica
All Photos By Gail

Do you love a good pop culture mash-up? I sure do, and Joseph Gross Gallery has an excellent one up right now for just a few short weeks, so don’t even wait until you’re done reading this review (kidding) to run over and check out James Charles’ Monstro Eyegasmica, which, I will just say right now, is completely fucking insane.

Monstro Eyegasmica — great title! – collects five of Charles’ large, mixed media paintings in which the artist combines illustration, painting and collage-style composition to create works that are at once strikingly familiar and gloriously unsettling.

For example, the exhibit’s eponymous work (seen above) combines The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and that famous scene in the original Planet of the Apes where Charlton Heston’s character kisses the monkey lady. Seriously, this is a work of genius.

Enlightened Ronald

Elsewhere, Charles’ brand-jamming artwork irreverently combines pop culture characters with traditional iconography and embodies a sarcastic sense of humor. Here we see an enlightened Ronald McDonald sitting in for Jimi Hendrix of the cover of the album Axis: Bold As Love.

Mickey and Minnie

T.R.I.A.P.S. (Two Rats in a Psychedelic Sock) puts an R Crumb-esque spin on Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Bride of Pinkenstein

Bride of Pinkenstein marries the Bride of Frankenstein as portrayed by Angela Lansbury with one of the world’s most famous paintings, Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of eleven year-old Sarah Barrett Moulton, better known as Pinkie.

Frankenstein's Blue Boy

How absolutely perfect then that Charles dresses his likeness of Frankenstein’s Monster in the outfit worn by Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, which hangs directly opposite Pinkie in the permanent collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Charles has also worked as a commercial sculptor, creating toy prototypes for the likes of Disney, Mattel, and Hasbro, so you can see where his irreverence and keen humor is coming from. His work reminds me very much of Ron English’s Popaganda movement, but with a more refined sense of the absurd.

James Charles’ Monstro Eyegasmica will be on Exhibit Through November 25th, 2015 at Joseph Gross Gallery, Now Located in a Fabulous Street Level Space at 548 at West 28th Street, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

Joseph Gross Gallery Signage