Dean Monogenis — The Other Way — Xippas Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Starts tomorrow: April 26 → June 7, 2025

Xippas is pleased to present the third solo exhibition of American painter Dean Monogenis in its Paris space. The exhibition will bring together a selection of new paintings created over the past year and will open with the presentation of the artist’s new monograph Higher Ground, on the occasion of the opening reception.

Fictional Reality Zone

“As soon as humans appear, everything begins to change.” This phrase, uttered by one of the protagonists of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, could be applied to the painted landscapes of Dean Monogenis. Large mountain panoramas bordered by clear lakes whose hypnotic shimmer is treated with a condensation of colored bands that introduce, into the immensity of nature, an artificial geometric composition. The artist plays with the resurgence of a Donald Judd-style colorful minimalism in the depths of classical landscapes, responding to the Albertian perspective. The infiltration of this cohabitation of styles questions the status of the image: reality or simulation, mental construction? Disturbance sets in. The window opened by the painter becomes a zone of “fictional reality” to be explored. Indeed, if everything on the surface seems to adhere to a realism “of the already seen,” the gaze tirelessly loses itself in the mystery of the unknown. And the sparing integration of human presence, suggested only by a few architectural elements — modernist houses perched on the side of a rocky peak or campers’ tents pitched at the water’s edge — reinforces the illustration of the solitary pilgrimage.

Julie Chaizemartin
Journalist and art critic

Born in 1973 in New York, USA, Dean Monogenis lives and works in Brooklyn, USA.

His oeuvre was part of numerous institutional shows: CAC Meymac (France), McNay Art Museum (Saint Antonio), Pavillon de l’Arsenal (Paris), Musée d’art moderne de Saint- Etienne Métropole (Saint-Etienne), Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland), Santa Monica Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of Art (New York), Mykonos Biennale (Mykonos), Angels Gate Cultural Centre (San Pedro), Pace University (New York), Federal Reserve Board (Washington), Hunterdon Art Museum (Clinton, New Jersey), Neuberger Museum (NY), Herter Gallery, (University of Massachusetts, Amherts), Makor-Steinhardt Center (New York), Macedonian Cultural Society (New York), Brooklyn Museum of Art (Brooklyn, New York).

In 2013, Dean Monogenis has received «Artist in the Market Place (AIM)» award, attributed by Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx, NY, USA) and in 2014 he was invited to conceive outdoor sculptures for the museum. In 2013 and 2016 he was granted residency in CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain.