EVERYTHING FALLS APART

December 5 - 31

Exploring values of life, death, recycling, and birth again - EVERYTHING FALLS APART aims to create a dialogue concerning the true fundamental nature of all things. In philosophies across religion, culture, and literature - truth can be extracted in that all things will eventually break apart. The temporal nature of all creation may be cause for fear, perhaps driving people to ever document their momentary lives. Drawing from the monastic traditions of the artist Elyas Popa, the temporary and emotional quality of Tetsuo Hasegawa’s paintings, and the re-imaginative and redemptive work of sculptor Mitsutaka Konagi’s configurations, the exhibit challenges the often negative perception of falling apart and instead embrace the focused mind it can bring. 

Mitsutaka Konagi is a sculptor born and raised in Japan. His art practice began when he joined the restoration company B&H Art-In-Architecture in 2009. Working with stone for over a decade through projects such as the New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the Frick Collection, Konagi acquired valuable stone carving knowledge and skill, which he applies to his work today. The configurations include stone from these New York Landmark buildings, bringing a sense of history and weight to his works. The combination of rough and smooth, slight color contrast, and jigsawed puzzle-work evokes the style of Brancusi and Noguchi, yet he lends his own hand to the sculptures that set them in a style of their own - marked by the gentility of hand and an understated warmth and ethereal lightness.  He also works with clay and wood, but he treasures the original colors and textures of each material. Konagi's sculptural pieces are a meticulous study of form that also draws attention to negative space and shadow. Currently, Konagi works from his studio in Brooklyn. View his CV and work at www.mkonagi.com @mkonagi (image used on exhibition poster)

Tetsuo Hasegawa’s paintings: part collage, part abstract, part representation, employ the use of repeated motifs, such as music, smoke, and color blocking to excavate the dichotomy of the pain and the strength that comes from being misunderstood. In his work, Still Misunderstood, Hasegawa brings the various motifs together in masterful storytelling. Using clipping of newspapers, magazines, and articles, there is a sense of what should be culturally understood as a human experience pluming into smoke. Above the subject’s head, a cloud-like negative space contains the reality of what it truly means to be understood - and how often it can be missed. (Image used on exhibition poster)

Elyas Popa is a curator, multi-media installation artist, and part owner of Zachary Elyas Gallery, based in New York. Popa’s work draws inspiration and focuses from his monastic practice, employing hyper fixation and repetition as a form of meditation. Inspired by the Korean movement Dansaekhwa, in all his work, Popa invites the viewer into a deeper sense of contemplation, incorporating his own philosophy into the Japanese foundations of wabi-sabi, celebrating imperfections as a form of beauty and extracting the artist’s third culture experience as an immigrant informed by his roots in multiple cultures. You can find Popa’s work @eliaspopa