Marc Yankus's Dreamlike Building Portraits Launch Clampart's New Flower District Space

Sep 9, 2016
2 min read

The Secret Lives of Buildings, Marc Yankus’s latest series of dreamlike portraits of New York City buildings, will be the artist’s fifth solo show at ClampArt, and the inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s new, expansive storefront space at 247 West 29th Street in the Flower District of Manhattan. The exhibition will be on view from October 13-November 26, 2016. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 13, 6-8 p.m.

Yankus’s newest images continue to straddle a fine line between documentary and fiction. In The Secret Lives of Buildings he captures the city’s architecture in an uncanny moment of stillness, free from the frenzy of people and cars. The sense of quietude lends elegance to the structures, both majestic and humble. Yankus inspires viewers to see historical buildings with a fresh perspective, offering an idealized and even utopian version of the past, while other buildings are viewed through a lens of potential. Yet in other scenes, the decay of crumbling concrete, chipped-away paint, and remnants of deconstruction paradoxically inspire a sense of keen nostalgia.

“My aim is to document New York’s iconic, lost and forgotten architecture -- from humble small buildings to soaring skyscrapers -- through a form of surreal architectural photography,” says Yankus. “The buildings are not presented simply as they are. Muted of distracting visual noise, they represent my vision of how they ought to be seen.”

Marc Yankus’ fine art and publishing experience spans a period of more than thirty years. His work has been included in exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Exit Art, New York City; The Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and ClampArt, New York City. Yankus’ artwork has graced the covers of books by Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and Alan Hollinghurst, among many others.

His images have also been used for theatrical posters Broadway shows including Jane Eyre; August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; and John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Doubt. Additionally, Yankus’ photographs have appeared on the covers and inside the pages of publications ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Photo District News. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the New York Historical Society, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

More about the artist is available at www.marcyankus.com