Fridman Gallery presents Edge of Eden, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by German painter, Alina Grasmann.
The exhibition presents two bodies of works, West of Eden (2017) and Paper Town (2018). Both series investigate notions of paradise, fiction, trickery, and perception. Edge of Eden teeters at the ever-so-fleeting margin between artifice and reality.
West of Eden is a series of large-scale paintings that place elements of other, historical figurative paintings within the industrial architecture of Dia Beacon, a landmark of Minimalist art. Grasmann has strategically placed the figures, such as Melchior d'Hondecoeter’s birds and Vincent Van Gogh's sunflowers, inside the converted factory building, next to sculptures by Dan Flavin and Bruce Nauman. By doing so, the artist has decontextualized the work, creating a sense of whimsy and fantasy amidst the highly classified space of the museum and academic art historical cannon.
