Flowers That Fly. Oil on canvas, 46″x66″, ©2008, Leonard Koscianski. Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago.
Announcing an exhibition of new work:
Carl Hammer Gallery 740 N. Wells Street Chicago, IL 60654February 6 to March 14, 2009.
Artist’s reception - Friday, February 6 from 5:30 until 8:00 PM.
The gallery writes:
A critic of the postmodern world, Leonard Koscianski’s art work frequently alludes to the dark emotional turmoil of life in suburban America. Paintings of snarling dogs, attacking birds, and beautiful, seemingly docile flowers are portrayed as predatory in a world of suburban neighborhood settings. They are often surrounded by cage-like networks of branches representing the individual as isolated from the product of his labor, and imprisoned in suburban sprawl. He is tantalized and inevitably frustrated in his quest for consumer products. He is shorn of religion, ethics, and metaphysics. Even long standing customs are suspect. Using a symbolic representation of postmodern man and his world, the artist implies that the angry, frustrated postmodern individual reverts to a Hobbesean primitive on an emotional level. Connecting himself to modernist social critics like Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson, Koscianski suggests that the “Heart of Darkness” is to be found in Middle America.