At the Jonathan LeVine Gallery (557C West 23rd Street location), starting June 25th, a new solo show from EVOL entitled “Unreal Estate” will be opening to the public. Known for his use of cardboard to recreate the look of buildings and structures, often times as site specific installations on the streets, the Berlin-based artist will be bringing his architectural illusions indoors. For this exhibition, his second (see 2012) with the New York showspace, he “comments on the ambiguity arising from the transformative stages of post-wall, pre-gentrified East Berlin to the new accomplishments of the burgeoning real estate market.”
He further states: “Society is constantly being pulled into an ever-expanding circuit of consumption. Fast real estate profits in city centers only target an exclusive and wealthy demographic, causing simple housing in traditional working class neighborhoods to also get the “luxury treatment.” These homes are often just dumbed in yellow paint and fake wood floods to achieve a certain standard, just enough to multiply the rent. The old dirty fuzz is replaced with something new and shiny, artificial and impersonal. Like a non-place, the traces of existing life, past history and their creators are erased. I see my pieces as portraits of areas within this stage of transition and I search for details and remnants that tell me a neighborhood is still alive.”
Discuss Evol here.
