Stux Gallery is pleased to present New Paintings by New York based artist Dean Monogenis, on view through xxx, 2007. For his second exhibition at the Stux Gallery, Monogenis presents paintings that investigate the transient nature of the urban architectural structure.
Monogenis' skillfully rendered paintings utilize opposing finishes, high gloss and matte, to further decontextualize elements of time and space. Here the static is seen as evanescent and the essence of transformation is imbued with endless potential and possibilities. These virtual landscapes are filled with artifacts from the artist’s travels and of his fleeting visual memories of his family’s roots in Greece. The paintings follow a clear and consistent underlying design concept that skillfully weaves together the familiar with the unknown.
Through an amalgam of such disparate architectural elements as traditional Chinese Pagodas and blighted urban “projects,” Monogenis highlights the temporal nature of architecture. He reinforces this theme by empowering the vernacular of construction and restoration -- constant reminders of the cyclical nature of architectural usage. In his paintings, obtrusive and garish day-glo netting and scaffolding, used to cover buildings in various states of disrepair, serve to connect the old with the new to create timeless vistas of an imagined architectural landscape, free from the constraints of geographic distance and urban planning.