6s and 7s

In conjunction with Marlborough Gallery's exhibition Large Sculptures, Marlborough Chelsea has organised a group show in the pedestrian passageway between 56th and 57th Streets. Featuring a multi-generational and international group of contemporary artists, this exhibition highlights the friction between the built world and humanity, and the variable supremacy of nature and culture.

Sarah Braman takes her cue from the grand glass and steel of city architecture, but imbues these hard materials with a human scale and warmth of colour. Tony Matelli, Matt Johnson and Charles Harlan transform and recontextualise the utilitarian oil drum, traffice barrier and rollgate (subtle symbols of power and control in city life) to initiate an art-historical and phenomenological dialogue. Robert Melee, Keith Edmier and John Ahearn pervert the civic ideal of the public monument through the abstraction and personalisation of the bronze figure, and by honoring ordinary citizens. Elsewhere, Lars Frisk and Lothar Hempel employ the speed of vehicular transportation and the hypersped of digital exchange to note a surprising whiff of nostalgia inherent in the incessant roll of commerce.