Dean Monogenis — Continuous Coast — Xippas Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 6, 2021 → January 15, 2022

Xippas is happy to present Continuous Coast, a second personal show of Dean Monogenis in our Paris gallery. The exhibition will show the artist’s most recent paintings produced during the immobilizing times of Covid.

To contradict both physical and mental isolation, Dean Monogenis’ new body of work questions the notion of place and advocates connectivity. It invites us to undertake a virtual journey through an imaginary and thus tantalizing coastline, drawn from “memories of how places feel”, to repeat after Richard Nonas’ poem that has inspired the works. Made of fragmented landscapes tied together on a formal and conceptual level, the exhibition will make us regain freedom of movement — and of thought, inciting us to imagine the “ache of that desert, those woods, that room opening…” But opening where? And for how long?

Dean Monogenis is an American artist of Greek heritage who lives and works in Brooklyn. His paintings feature dreamy spaces in which architectural and natural elements interlace. He depicts modernist buildings,

colorful scaffoldings, imaginary architect houses in the middle of rocky landscapes taken over by savage vegetation. Balancing on the borderline separating the real and the fantastical, his artworks seem to incarnate a permanent state of transition, an ongoing dialogue between urbanisation and nature, forging an utopian vision with a dystopian touch. Since the collapse of the twin towers, Monogenis realised that buildings are meant to live and die, the same way humans do, and, like humans, they too have stories. It is these stories that the artist tries to bring out by isolating architectural ensembles and by placing them in incongruous surroundings, so that they may open up and reveal themselves in a new light.

In general, Dean Monogenis paints on wood or aluminum panels with the use of stencils and tape, and combines abstract elements with painterly components depicted in all the fascinating details. The lines, edges and textures are very important to him. His gesture is premeditated and precise without compromising spontaneity.

His oeuvre was part of numerous institutional

shows: 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.