Ellen Grossman’s “Surface Complex” Gallery Opens In Brooklyn

Ellen Grossman may have seemed like just another straphanger until that fateful day when she ended up sitting next to JAY Z as he took the subway to the last night of his eight-show Barclays Center run. The clip of their conversation went viral, and as many soon found out, she’s also an accomplished artist. Grossman’s new installation entitled Surface Complex opens today at Art 101 Gallery in Brooklyn, and below, she gives us some insight into her new.

“These drawings and sculptures come from my take on the excitements and frustrations of being alive. They are full of net structures that hold everything together. Whether you see it as ensnarement or support, is a matter of how you look at it. I see it more on the support side (but that is often mixed in with the difficult stuff). The scale model called “Passage Through A Chain Link Cloud,” (pictured above) is a direct response to an experience I had walking in the dark along side of two parallel chain link fences (somehow the parks department built them at two different times without realizing that they were only a foot apart). I thought I was being stalked because the two fences set up an optical illusion of motion that only happened when I was in motion. I would see it out of the corner of my eye as I walked but when I stopped to look nothing would be there. When I realized that I was seeing something like a hologram the relief was intense and some how hooked into my perspective on mixed feelings and how things can work out and even be funny. The sculpture is a way of getting at that. It also is about how real chain link fences enclose prisons as well as playgrounds.” – Ellen Grossman

Ellen Grossman’s Surface Complex Exhibition takes place at ART 101 Gallery. Click here for more information.