MASKS by Gabriele Grones and Peter Depelchin

Open­ing Recep­tion Sep­tem­ber 2, 11am-5pm

“Masks,” a duo show by Res­i­den­cy Unlim­it­ed (RU) artists Gabriele Grones and Peter Depelchin, offers a visu­al excur­sion through draw­ing, paint­ing and video instal­la­tion. In his works, Peter exam­ines how faces are rep­re­sent­ed in mask, facial mor­phol­o­gy and dis­tor­tions employed. The imagery he uses takes as a start­ing point Phoeni­cian, Roman, Greek, Native Amer­i­can and Japan­ese masks which he then trans­lates into high­ly hybridized depic­tions of Satyrs and Fauns. Depelch­in’s elab­o­rate draw­ings lead the spec­ta­tor from one sin­gu­lar mask to a mul­ti­tude of lay­ered masks, which lit­er­al­ly get under your skin. Gabriele’s case-stud­ies are intense­ly elab­o­rat­ed both as con­cept and as paint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tions. With his works he focus­es on the con­nec­tions between dif­fer­ent cul­tures, delv­ing into ancient rit­u­al cus­toms and habits through the pic­to­r­i­al analy­sis of sym­bols, objects, nat­ur­al details, fig­ures and com­po­si­tions. For this occa­sion, he cre­at­ed a series of metic­u­lous­ly paint­ed masks of Native Amer­i­can tribes from the col­lec­tions of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art.

RU is one of the 2023 Gov­er­nors Island Arts Orga­ni­za­tions in Residence