Platform Gallery's Page

May 8 to June 14

In a period of time where arguments are made about the existence of global warming, studies are mounted to measure the impact on the environment and on society of urban sprawl, and the effects of the rapid industrialization of developing countries are felt, Platform Gallery is pleased to present Eden's On Fire!, a landscape group show featuring stunning paintings and masterful drawings made by artists Saul Becker, Joy Garnett, and Michael Schall.

Saul Becker's drawings and paintings are made up of fragments and pieces from different places and sources forming dreamy landscapes that are powerful metaphors of utopias lost. Joy Garnett appropriates newsworthy and documentary photographs from the Internet and re-invents them as sumptuous paintings. Her subject is both the content of these found images and the photograph itself as cultural artifact. Michael Schall imagines landscapes where "instruments of human industry attempt to somehow alter the surface of the earth." His large graphite drawings celebrate both the futility and the potentiality of society's grand constructions by exploring the way cities sprawl with both power plants and landfills.

Biographies
Saul Becker received a MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA). He is represented by Sunday L.E.S. (New York) where he currently has a solo exhibition. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Lab Gallery, (New York, NY) Victory Hall Art Center (Jersey City, NJ) and the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA) among others. He was the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Art Fellowship as well as an Artist Trust GAP Grant. His work has been discussed in NY Arts Magazine and the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Joy Garnett studied painting at L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from The City College of New York. She appropriates newsworthy and documentary photographs from the Internet and re-invents them as paintings. Notable past exhibitions include her recent solo show at Winkleman Gallery (New York, NY); Strange Weather at the National Academy of Sciences, (Washington, DC); Image War, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York 2006);  When Artists Say We, Artists Space (New York 2006); Visionary Anatomies, Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition (2004-2007); and Without Fear or Reproach, De Witte Zaal (Ghent, Belgium 2003). Garnett's work has appeared in Harper's, Cabinet magazine, and Perspecta: The Yale School of Architecture Journal. She has received grants from the Anonymous Was a Woman foundation, and the Wellcome Trust (UK), and currently serves as Arts Editor for the scholarly journal Cultural Politics.

Michael Schall is represented by Pierogi New York (New York, NY) where he had a solo in 2007. His work has been included in groups shows at Pierogi Leipzig (Germany, 2007), Smack Mellon, (New York, 2007), Breda's Museum (The Netherlands, 2007) Galerie Adler (Germany, 2006) and the 2005 CoCA Annual (Seattle, WA 2005) among others. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in New York and is the recipient of a 2007-2008 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.