Urban Wilderness

Local Project Art Space is pleased to present Urban Wilderness, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Rebecca Sherman.

The exhibition features a dialogue between two series of paintings. The first series, Industrial Evolution (2015–2019), depicts old factories and industrial spaces in New York that have been transformed into something else (start-ups, art spaces, location sites, etc). The compositions smash color, planes, and light together to compress time into one flat surface.

The second series, Indoor/Outdoor (2020–2022), was initially inspired by the boundaries that we’ve lived in during the COVID 19 pandemic. It explores the relationship of being indoors versus outdoors and the contrast between the city and the countryside. The paintings feature industrial spaces and windows that merge into natural landscapes to create a new perspective. Each composition dissects “Mondrian” patterns of windows from industrial buildings in Long Island City. Sherman layers these window patterns with images of various landscapes (such as a state park, an ocean waterfront, a tropical rain forest, and a desert). The paintings show how the windows evolve into the rock formations, water, sky, leaves, and trees. Eventually, the series extended to imagine a post-apocalyptic city where nature ‘reclaims’ abandoned buildings.

Urban Wilderness is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.