Scott Graeber Exhibition Opening, RePop, Brooklyn TONIGHT!

Tonight--Friday October 2nd--RePop in Brooklyn will be hosting an art opening for artist Scott Graeber, whose artworks deal with anatomical imagery and explore issues of mortality. The exhibition will feature his frescos and several anatomical casts (as seen above), as well as a selection of actual jarred specimens. The show will be held at RePop, at 68 Washington Ave, from 7:30 to 11, Brooklyn, accessible from the G train. The show will be up until November 1.

Following is more about Graeber's work, from his artist's statement:

Since the age of eighteen every job that I have had has centered around death and the disassembly of the human body. Over twenty years of such work has pushed me into a permanent melancholy. My art, however, has flourished under these circumstances, even as the rest of my life (and body) gradually dissolves.

Out of desperation I turned to art. I made three-dimensional collage works that were labeled as perverted or grotesque. After a number of group and solo shows this mode of working ceased to satisfy me, and I began a study of fine art. Several years of figurative study have brought me to a point where I am satisfied that I can translate my ideas to clay or canvas.

Recently I read an article about sperm whales and learned that the whales are gouged and disfigured about their heads by the food they eat (giant squid) and from goring each other with their teeth in sex spats. For weeks I have walked around looking at everyone as an assemblage of wounds, as if the battles of their lives were scars wrapped around their faces. Every maneuver of avoidance, every slight glance, wringing of wrists, all evidence of failed loves, of lovers consumed.

Art is the high point of a society. Without it, we are nothing. Nothing, that is, but a collection of scars and defects waiting to be re-cycled. Its our art allows us to transcend this darkness. It lives beyond us on our temple walls, books, tapestries and in the dreams of our descendants. When its creator is forgotten, art proves its true magic. It lives on even as we do not.

This opening is sure to be amazing. I would be there if I could! Hope you can make it!

More on RePop--including directions--and the opening can be found here.