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Doodle in Wet Cement at an Experimental Art Exhibit

Artist Jack Greer explores subcultural microcosms created through mark-making in his new show, 'Landmark,' at Howard St Gallery.

Artist Jack Greer conducts an anthropologic study in his new show at the Howard St Gallery in New York. Landmark is a series a paintings and photographs in which Greer explores the ways in which “subcultures and social groups make broader anthropological statements about the human desire for cohesion." Greer’s inspiration stems from the hills of Los Angeles County, where Santa Monica city gangs tag rocks and trees surrounding recreational hiking trails and lookouts; and a riverbank on the outskirts of Paris where collectives of skateboarders inscribe messages and initials into tree bark. Greer looks at how these networks of mark-making can build a line of communication between absent and separate social entities.

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Amongst his hanging paintings and photographs, Greer installed a wet cement slab down the middle of the gallery space. The sculpture emulates the streets of New York City, where the individual has to fight the impulse to write their name into drying cement when you're not allowed to. Greer recreates this same am I allowed to touch the art? tensions within the gallery, while at the same time inserting an open-ended time specific sculpture into the exhibition that channels the performative aspects of mark-making. Greer tells The Creators Project, “the show is about these anecdotal histories that are preserved on the landscape / how cultures create a dialogue with one another… the cement sculpture created a history of the gathering of individuals during the opening of the exhibition.”

Check out shots of the wet cement installation and some of our favorite pieces from the show:

Jack Greer’s Landmark show is on display at the Howard St Gallery from July 23rd to August 14th, 2015. Find out more here.

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