Monument Valley

October 29 - December 4

 Monaco is pleased to present Monument Valley, a two-person exhibition featuring new collaborative works by Monaco member Edo Rosenblith and Brooklyn-based artist Erik S. Peterson. The exhibition is in Monaco's Project Gallery and will open on Friday, October 29, from 6:00 – 9:00 pm and run through December 4, 2020.

 I first met Erik in 2007 during our freshman year at the Rhode Island School of Design on a grassy knoll known as the RISD Beach, and we've been friends ever since. After graduating, I moved back to St. Louis, and Erik promptly moved to Brooklyn. After an extended hiatus from making art, Erik became interested in making sculptures and began teaching himself woodworking and casting techniques. Meanwhile, since graduate school, I started thinking about turning the uncanny imagery that I imagine into tangible objects. In the Summer of 2019, realizing our interests were aligning, we collaborated on various projects. This exhibition is our most substantial collaborative project to date.

The inspiration for Monument Valley comes from a variety of sources. However, a key influence was the Iconoclastic events that took place last summer in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Activists and protesters began dismantling monuments and symbols of the Confederacy. Public ire soon turned to many other public monuments of historical figures whose actions became more closely securitized by 21st-century eyes. This renewed interest in what a society selectively chooses to memorialize is a concept which informs our collaborative work. Many of the objects in this exhibition use the lexicon or materials of monuments but at a miniature scale that fits the space of Monaco's Project gallery. The end result is a show of two tables and eight objects made during the decline of the American Empire. Our exhibition's other vital themes include Freudian patricide, post-humanism, fully automated space communism, dogs, post-Zionism, circumcision as castration, ritual object, and anime. 

-Edo Rosenblith 

BIOS

Edo Rosenblith was born in 1988 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Rosenblith received his BFA in painting in 2011 at the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA in Visual Art at Washington University-St. Louis, in 2017. Rosenblith has exhibited throughout St. Louis, at The Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, The Center of Creative Arts (COCA), The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, The Luminary, Fort Gondo, Des Lee Gallery, and Parapet Real Humans. Rosenblith has exhibited nationally at The International Print Center, New York; Below Grand, New York; Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn; The Elmhurst Museum, Chicago; Julius Cesar, Chicago; and internationally at Jenifer Nails Gallery in Frankfurt Germany. A two-year survey of Edo's sketchbook drawings became the content of his first book, PINK, published by Fort Gondo Press in 2013. In 2017, Rosenblith illustrated a chapbook for New York-based poet Paul Legault entitled What Dorothea Did published by Dikembe Press. Rosenblith lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri, with a poodle named Ari. He became a member of Monaco in 2019. 

Erik S. Peterson was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1987. Peterson received his BFA in painting in 2011 at the Rhode Island School of Design. Peterson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, with a beagle-shih tzu named Peter.