EMERALD CITY
August 7 - October 2, 2014

Artists: Leslie Adler, Milcah Bassel, Aileen Bassis, Jennifer Cake Caviola, Lindsey Clark-Ryan, Nancy Cohen, Hyun Cho, David Antonio Cruz, Marc D'Agusto, Patricia Dahlman, Ariel DeAndrea, Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern, Samer Fouad, Ming-Jer Kuo, Katherine Mojzsis, Jaye Moon, Natalia Nakazawa, Nina Pilar, Kelly Ann Pinho, Jorge Sanchez, Negin Sharifzadeh, Christine Soccio, Charlee Swanson, Kelly Vetter, Kati Vilim, Virginia Wagner, Joe Waks, Etty Yaniv

As part of a curatorial collaboration between Project For Empty Space (Jasmine Wahi) and Solo(s) Project House (Rebecca Jampol), The Gateway Project announced the second exhibition in the Gateway Concourse, which included temporary murals, sculpture and skylight installations in an exhibition titled “Emerald City ,”

The Emerald City is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The city is sometimes called the City of Emeralds. Located in the center of the Land of Oz, at the end of the famous yellow brick road. It is described as being built of green glass, emeralds, and other jewels, a Utopian space to the untrained eye. In Sidney Lumet’s, The Wiz (1978), the Emerald City is an epicenter of cosmopolitan style and sophistication- a veritable catwalk of high-culture. However, the grandeur and almost-gaudy appearance of the Emerald city is merely a facade- beneath the blanket of glittering gems is a raw industrial infrastructure that is no more glamourous than it sounds. The Emerald City is no different than any other metropolis that once reaped the benefits of industrialisms boom era- a surreal masterpiece of enchanting beauty and shimmering vivacity that covers a raw and almost-dystopian chaos held together by a decidedly unglamourous armature. 

Work included in Emerald City duly incorporated and embraced the materiality of industrial substances typically used as internal frameworks. Artists transformed these substances that are often associated with industrial fabrication into objects whose existence is substantiated by beauty over function. The purpose, ultimately, of the exhibition was to explore the often indiscernible difference and existence of appearance and reality- beauty and chaos- dystopia and utopia in the urban expanse.

EXHIBITIONS SPONSORS:
The Emerald City was made possible by Brick City Development Corporation (BCDC), 2 Gateway Center owner C & K Properties, The Gateway Concourse Association and Standard Charter.