How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Steinhardt studio art professor Peter Rostovsky is much more than an art teacher. Just ask his students who visited his latest exhibition on display in two galleries in SoHo and Chelsea.
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Chelsea
Professor Rostovsky is "one of the most effective instructors" they have had, studio art students said in praise of Rostovsky at one of the gallery openings.
Together with Swedish artist Olav Westphalen, Rostovsky forms the collaborative duo, P.R.O.W.
The exhibition's first installment, "PROW: The Prequel," had its opening at the Sara Meltzer Gallery in Chelsea last Friday.
Watercolor sketches derived from Google's "3D Warehouse," lined the walls of the small space, creating a virtual world of planning and production. The drawings portray abstract shapes and forms of buildings, stages and figures on a grid-like background. The fairly simple but accurate artwork boasts the duo's technical skills in drawing and painting.
The show's second installment, "Anti-Prow," at Art in General in SoHo is specifically designed to counter the exhibition at the Sara Meltzer Gallery.
"'Anti-Prow' did a nice job examining the dark side of a cult-collective without being kitschy and predictable," Katie Norman, a senior in Steinhardt's studio art program, said.
While "PROW: The Prequel" explores the "sketch-up" qualities of production, "Anti-Prow" depicts the "darker" side of entertainment, imagery and planning. Drawings of a dead Lenin portray the doubts and contradictions that come with any form of planning or collective artistic effort.
Along with Rostovsky's success, students in his class also had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with gallery work.
"A few other students and I in Peter's Painting I class helped set up this show," Norman said. "I spent at least 40 hours working on it the first week I got back from break."
Norman helped cut out the cloth flames and choose the fans for the show's interactive centerpiece. Under the flames, rows of fans face upward covered by metal bars. Every ten minutes, the fans simultaneously turn on, timed with underlying yellow and red lights-. The cloth flames then burst upward in a flash of bright colors, creating an enormous bonfire.
The centerpiece is meant to be a reflection on the flashiness and brevity of the entertainment industry.
Perhaps more important than the message of Rostovsky's exhibition is the value it holds for his students who participated in its realization.
"I worked pretty hard on this show, but now it feels great to be a part of it," said Brett Garde, a junior in Rostovsky's painting class. "It feels great to finally see all the people show up, and I think, 'I helped do this. I helped make something that all these people are coming to look at.'"
"PROW: The Prequel" runs until Feb. 27 at Sara Meltzer Gallery in Chelsea. "Anti-Prow" runs until March 20 at Art in General in SoHo.
