"Urban Montage"

A photo exhibition by Charlene Weisler

April 16, 2009 - June 11, 2009

Opening Reception > Thursday, April 16, 2009

Artist Statement

Charlene Weisler's photography of the ever-changing urban landscape reflects the transience and impermanence of street art. Concentrating on the evolving nature of layered graffiti, Weisler captures a timeline of competing artistic efforts and messages.The result is a rich compendium of texture, color and form that showcases both organic energy and urban decay. This is a unique expression of environmental art as voiced by competing images and agendas, all of which are invariably undone and made all the more beautifully weary by time and weather.

The transitory impermanent nature of street art arguably stands as this generation’s art movement. Steeped in tradition of portraiture, landscape, collage and abstract expressionism, urban montage street art is, in fact, more than the sum of its historical parts. It is one of the few art movements that shifts its tactile physicality on a minute by minute basis. Street art has a limited lifespan and, more frequently, shortly after creation often changes or is totally destroyed. Weisler’s haunting photographs maneuver between these worlds doing so in a way that makes the viewer see something totally new and self-contained. 

Her educational background includes a diploma in fine art from New York City’s Music and Art High School and a B.A. cum laude in Art from CCNY. She also completed a year’s study of Art Historiography and Criticism from the University of Essex, England and holds a MBA in the Arts from SUNY Binghamton.

Weisler is a New York City based photographer whose perspectives on street art have been featured in a video at The Wooster Collective’s 11 Spring Street exhibition. Her work is featured on Charles Saatchi’s gallery site, in New York’s MTA Image Registry, The Museum of Modern Art Library, as part of Chelsea’s SOHO20 Gallery 13th Annual International Women’s Exhibition, in several private collections and in a solo show in Kyoto, Japan.

Artist Bio

Charlene Weisler is a New York City based photographer whose gritty photographs chronicle the ever-changing urban landscape of street art. Her work takes urban decay and re-composes it into something beautiful, self-contained and totally original.

www.CharleneWeisler.com