Continuing through June 9, 2013
In "Belle Città," Milan-based painter Marco Petrus’s first American exhibition, the subject of urban architecture is celebrated in elegantly stylish compositions. This tightly curated grouping of almost exclusively up-canted metropolitan viewpoints offers a modern look at Shanghai, London and Milan, to name a few. With bold use of perspective and a moderated, straightforward color palette, Petrus forgoes typical representations of bustling urban life, instead urging the viewer to meditate on often overlooked architectural details such as stark ledges and darkened windowsills.
The sheer, upward positioning of so many of these compositions encourages a sense of exhilarating monumentality; it’s a potentially crushing point of view that’s made intriguingly intimate by the relatively modest scale of the paintings. "Florin Court" is a dramatic standout. It’s a shock of undulating, brick-red waves, punctuated by steely gray windows and silvery ledges. "Monza," with its stark, stylized central column, is similarly angular: a high-rise building pictured before a wash of cloudless cerulean sky.
