KUSTERA PROJECTS is pleased to present Crone and Friends, the solo debut of artist Grant Stoops. The exhibition dates are March 24th through April 28th, 2018, with an opening reception on Saturday, March 24th from 6-8pm.
The exhibition will focus on a series of paintings depicting a world of distorted, melted, and disordered human creatures. Before becoming a painting, miniature sculptural forms are created in wax-based clay and are arranged in several positions under a variety of lighting sources, photographed, and then digitally composed into a diorama-like space. The basis for the paintings are the digital files as well as the original sculptures. The translation across many mediums is intended to erode all obvious reference to reality while rendering an alternate world in high detail.
Stoops’ work inverts the relationship between scale and importance, transforming the material vagaries of sculpture and expressionistic painting to intentionality. As examples of this, fingerprints in clay become the striations of muscles in the large figure of the Clowny Guy, and sprayed foam insulation works as an intestinal landscape in Dyson Sphere Endoscopy.
Grant Stoops was born in 1985 in Kingman, Kansas, and received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2007. His work was recently included in the Governors Island Art Fair curated by 4Heads and at last year’s Spring/Break Art Show at Times Square. Stoops has worked as a painting assistant to various artists for the past 8 years, including Jeff Koons and Vija Celmins. This will be the artist’s debut solo show. Grant Stoops lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

opening reception : Saturday, March 24th from 6-8pm.

mpefm USA art press release