Opening: Mie Olise Exhibition

Barbara Davis Gallery is proud to announce the upcoming solo-exhibition by Danish artist Mie Olise entitled Crystal Bites of Dust, opening Friday, January 11, 2013, with an artist reception from 6:30 – 8:30pm. 

For this exhibition, Danish artist Mie Olise unveils her exploration of the Gowanus Canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn through a series of new paintings that investigate the impact of industrialism on the surrounding area. Laden with desolation and abandonment, Olise viewed the Gowanus Canal as a subject worth reviving and uplifting, as her paintings romanticize the seemingly forgotten monuments, factories, and landscapes. Inspired by Robert Smithson’s article “Monuments of the Passaic,” published in 1967 in ArtForum, Olise recreates his journey along the Hackensack River in New Jersey. As Smithson traveled west of Manhattan, toward the Passaic bridges of New Jersey, describing the decaying monuments and ruins near the Hackensack River, Olise journeyed east to Brooklyn and found a similar situation surrounding the Gowanus Canal. Smithson documented his voyage with an Instamatic 400 and referred to the deserted locations he photographed as “non-spaces.” Olise mirrors his concept by illustrating the scenery of the Gowanus Canal through a series of monumental paintings, in order to find what she calls the empty “pores” of the city, spaces left behind to fall into dust. Olise examines the monuments of Gowanus, the hidden spaces beneath the bridges, the uninhabited factories, and the polluted waters of the canal, and ultimately gives them new life by painting them, thus solidifying their existence and transforming them into “crystals of industrialization.”